Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview

General Announcements
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UE GDC 2024 Blog Post_Manny 5.4_v02
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Download Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview from the Epic Games launcher, GitHub, or for Linux!

Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview 1 sees improvements to overall performance and workflows to help get you to those final pixels even faster. With many developers targeting 60 Hz experiences, we’ve invested significant effort into improving rendering performance in UE 5.4.

Nanite continues to receive enhancements. An Experimental new Tessellation feature enables fine details such as cracks and bumps to be added at render time. Moreover, the addition of software variable rate shading (VRS) via Nanite compute materials brings substantial performance gains.

Animators, get ready—the built-in animation toolset received substantial updates enabling you to quickly and easily rig characters and author animations directly in the engine, without hopping to external applications. Create faster with an Experimental new Modular Control Rig, Automatic Retargeting, reorganized Anim Details, an overhauled Sequencer, and more!

There are also a number of features moving into Production-Ready, including Motion Matching, an expandable next-gen framework for animation features; and Multi-Process Cook, which reduces the time it takes to get a cooked output.

Want to know more? Get an in-depth list of Unreal Engine 5.4 features and updates on the Roadmap.

Unreal Engine 5.4 Roadmap

Keep in mind, preview releases are not fully quality tested, are still under heavy active development, and should be considered as unstable until the final release. We recommend that developers make a copy of their projects for testing these builds, not to convert their projects.

Known & Fixed Issues

Known Issues

  • UE-207039 - LogZenServiceInstance: Warning: Found locked valid lock file but no matching process. Causes editor launch to fail
    Workaround:
    When the UnrealEditor process is shutting down and starting up quickly (such as when creating a new project or switching between existing projects) on Mac/Linux alone, we have observed that the accompanying ZenServer process may not be started correctly leading to the editor logging a message about failing to find ZenServer process locking file and then stopping with a fatal error about “no writable nodes available”. Attempting a re-launch of the editor for the target project will succeed.
  • UE-209674 - Quixel plugin encounters Critical Error when logging in on Linux. This occurs on AMD machines running Mesa drivers on version 22.2.5.
    Workaround:
    Update your Mesa drivers to version 23.2.1 or newer.
  • UE-209769 - Win64 project packages that have “Include App-Local Prerequisites” enabled will prompt users to install Microsoft C++ Runtime upon starting the executable.
    Workaround:
    Disable “Include App-Local Prerequisites” for the project before packaging.
  • Compiling Microsoft platforms with the Visual Studio 2022 “MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.39-17.9)” toolchain will cause internal compiler errors.
    Workaround:
    In the Visual Studio 2022 installer, install the “MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.38-17.8)” individual component before compiling.
  • Sonic Studio Virtual Mixer on certain ASUS boards causes various crashes
    Workaround:
    Disable the Sonic Studio Virtual Mixer in the Device Manager under “Sound, video and game controllers.”

If you discover any additional issues with this preview release, please report them using the guidelines in the link: How to Report a Bug

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Amazing!! Very excited to get my hands on this preview :grin: especially the new animation toolset!! Thanks Epic :heart:

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Cool, thank Epic :wink:

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Amazing features, great job EG Team!

However, there are a number of high severity, active bugs that have been reported by the community that don’t appear to be in the fix list? A big one being World Partition Tiles not loading with collision… Palworld suffers from this bug intermittently. A large number of the community were anticipating 5.4 would include a fix for this.

Has this already been fixed and is mentioned elsewhere?

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Excellent update!

But… what about Lumen? The only mention on the roadmap is towards mobile. What about news on performance and bug fixes?

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Hello.
I have downloaded 5.4 because I saw shadows in 1943 that used Hetegeneous actor.
Decided to test It If will show up.

Unfortunately, VDB still don’t receive any shadow in Deferred Rendering.

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Compiling Microsoft platforms with the Visual Studio 2022 “MSVC v143 - VS 2022 C++ x64/x86 build tools (v14.39-17.9)” toolchain will cause internal compiler errors.

Actually, this is fixed by newly released vs2022 17.9.4, I’ve tried that 10 hours ago, and those ICE are gone.

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Great to see.

But please, @Amanda.Schade , report this issue to whom it may concern and fix it someday! I beg you. Please, please, pleaaaaaase :weary::


(Look at those white artifacts around objects)

I have already reported it MANY times, and in many ways and along a very long time (months and even a year); through the Bug submission form twice or even more (always ignored), through the forums (they say it’s not their competence), through Linkedin (he told me to try to report it to the right guy, but the error is still here)… and this is my last try.

I think this shoudn’t be a permissible bug in a high-end and high-quality software like Unreal. And it’s a very obvious bug and very easily to make it happen. Maybe devs are not meticulous enough to notice it.

For more information and download of the example/proof project, already reported in this post: Lumen GI and Reflections feedback thread - #1438 by Miguel1900

Thank you and best regards :frowning:

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When can we expect the Motion Matching Sample Project? :slight_smile:

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I was pleasantly surprised by the new functionality for changing the language of the UE 5.4 editor. But is it possible to do a split translation? For example, Blender: you can set the interface language to one, but the description of functions and properties of variables is in another language. I would really like to see this opportunity)

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Awesome! Glad to finally see Virtual Camera running on a Mac! :tada:

Still awaiting Mac support for Nanite though. Once that comes I’ll be an official Unreal fan. For now, I’ll keep watching on the sidelines. :wink:

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When can we expect the motion matching sample?

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There is no options on the Launcher Version of 5.4 Preview, so cant install debug symbols…

nooptions

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Can we expect to get an update on FAB and future megascans bridge updates soon? Current import options are very limited. Only Nanite with 8K textures etc.

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Has anyone figured out how to get nanite tessellation working? Does it require the config files changes as in 5.3?

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That seems to be set to 1 in the default engine ini for new 5.4 projects - but I haven’t been able to get the tessellation working either.

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Make sure “Use Displacement” is checked in the material attributes. Also if you’re using Landscape, click on the “Rebuild Data” button in the Landscape properties and the displacement should work.

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Can you confirm you have landscape tessellation working in 5.4? Enable Tessellation is on in project and material and data rebuilt.

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Is ray traced GI and Reflections just gone?..
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I also cannot find it in epic launcher is there a glitch?

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