Unreal Engine developer tools get big update for Apple Silicon Macs
Updates announced alongside Unreal Engine 5.2 include native Apple Silicon support for the Unreal Editor and an iPad app coming soon for the virtual stage production tool ICVFX Editor.
ICVFX controls on iPad
Epic Games-owned Unreal Engine powers a lot of modern 3D applications, from gaming to movie sets. Unreal Engine 5.2 launched on Thursday with some specialized tools around procedural content generation and substrate material mapping, but some Apple news was mixed in as well.
The Unreal Editor now has native Apple Silicon support and is delivered via a universal binary. This means increased performance, efficiency, and stability for the tool.
Unreal Editor is an application that compiles Unreal Engine code. Basically, a tool that builds environments or models using Unreal's code and toolsets.
Another Apple-specific announcement was made for the iPad. Virtual sets are becoming more popular for productions like "Mandalorian" and ICVFX Editor is a powerful tool that brings Unreal to film.
However, as directors move around a virtual set, which is basically a large green room, controls over lighting, color grading, and more are left back at the desktop workstation. A new ICVFX app for iPad will place creative control directly into the filmmaker's hands while wandering the set.
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There are plenty of technical updates for Unreal Engine 5.2 that we won't dive into, like a new ML deformer sample that's available for download. Unreal also provided a Rivian-heavy look at Procedural Content Generation and Substrate material effects.
Get Unreal Engine 5.2 from Epic's website.
Read on AppleInsider
ICVFX controls on iPad
Epic Games-owned Unreal Engine powers a lot of modern 3D applications, from gaming to movie sets. Unreal Engine 5.2 launched on Thursday with some specialized tools around procedural content generation and substrate material mapping, but some Apple news was mixed in as well.
The Unreal Editor now has native Apple Silicon support and is delivered via a universal binary. This means increased performance, efficiency, and stability for the tool.
Unreal Editor is an application that compiles Unreal Engine code. Basically, a tool that builds environments or models using Unreal's code and toolsets.
Another Apple-specific announcement was made for the iPad. Virtual sets are becoming more popular for productions like "Mandalorian" and ICVFX Editor is a powerful tool that brings Unreal to film.
However, as directors move around a virtual set, which is basically a large green room, controls over lighting, color grading, and more are left back at the desktop workstation. A new ICVFX app for iPad will place creative control directly into the filmmaker's hands while wandering the set.
{"@context":"https://schema.org/","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Unreal Engine 5.2 Feature Highlights","description":"Unreal Engine 5.2 further expands UE5's groundbreaking toolset with some innovative new functionality-- including a Procedural Content Generation framework and Substrate material authoring-- alongside feature refinements and stability improvements. Find out more and download for free at www.unrealengine.com/updates.","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/I7zyNDazmGQ/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2023-05-11T15:03:52Z","duration":"PT2M56S","embedUrl":"
"}There are plenty of technical updates for Unreal Engine 5.2 that we won't dive into, like a new ML deformer sample that's available for download. Unreal also provided a Rivian-heavy look at Procedural Content Generation and Substrate material effects.
Get Unreal Engine 5.2 from Epic's website.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
This allows people to have high resolution texture painting apps like Substance Painter (Photoshop for 3D) open alongside the Unreal editor and export right into the editor to preview without running out of memory.
It's a shame Epic had to poison the water with their lawsuits, the M-series Macs are a great platform for this engine and they could have been a great partner to Apple.
Some Unreal 5 features haven't been supported on Mac like Nanite and raytracing and likely aren't in this release yet. It says here that only M2 is capable of supporting Nanite:
https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/12jxbq0/experimental_nanite_support_added_for_m2_based/
https://github.com/philipturner/ue5-nanite-macos
https://github.com/gladhu/UE5NanitePort
Nanite is one of the features shown in the car demo (1:56) and allows rendering lots of geometry, hopefully it will be fully supported on Mac in a future update:
I don't know of any UE5-based games on Apple's platforms yet, as it's still pretty new and there are very few so far. This will certainly change.
LOL why not?
But, still, this is a good step. Hopefully Apple will step up with some good hardware soon.
The M1 Max GPUs run about 1/5th-1/6th the speed of a 4090 comparing the same resolution and settings. M3 Max will likely bring that down to 1/3rd and the M3 Ultra will sit between a 3090 and 4090 in a small form factor.
Not sure if this is a comprehensive list, but I get 93 hits for ‘Mac OS’ here:
https://en.everybodywiki.com/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
This actually looks pretty usable (especially compared to older software I'm currently using). Hopefully the RT stuff will come with the M3. I've seen people demo'ing stuff on even the M1 Ultra Studio that isn't really all this usable, which is a problem for such a high-priced machine (when even a $1500 gaming PC is just fine). Hopefully some of that will end up being software optimization (and will actually get optimized!).
Ultimately, Apple needs to do something about this, unless they just intend to lose these markets. At least with Intel Macs, we did have an option to solve these situations.