Epic Games recently released the final version of Unreal Engine 4.22, which brings full support for real-time ray tracing and path tracing technology (Early Access). Both technologies currently require Windows 10 with the October RS5 update (it brought support for DirectX Raytracing technology) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX series cards (they are the only ones with DXR support so far). The developers of the engine released a special video dedicated to these new features:
The real-time ray tracing features consist of a number of related shaders and effects. They allow you to achieve real-time natural realistic lighting effects comparable to today's offline rendering tools in terms of shadows, global ambient shadowing, reflections and more.
Epic Games has introduced a range of ray tracing related features and will continue to expand the feature set in future versions of the engine. Here are just a few of those introduced in Unreal Engine 4.22 (read more about real-time ray tracing support on the company's website):
- soft area shading for different types of light sources (Directional, Point, Spot and Rect);
- accurate reflections for objects that enter the camera lens and are outside it;
- soft wraparound shading for ground objects in the scene;
- physically correct refractions and reflections for translucent surfaces;
- indirect illumination from dynamic global illumination from light sources.
Added to the engine, as we have already noted, is preliminary support for the more resource-demanding full-fledged technology of global path tracing, including for indirect lighting. This allows you to create a reference rendering right inside the engine and get a better rendering of the scene without the need to export to a third-party path tracer. You can read more on the Epic Games website.
Source: 3dnews.ru