Building Worlds in ‘Fortnite’ With Unreal Engine
summary
Epic describes how Chapter 2’s island is built using concrete UE features: runtime virtual texturing combines terrain and props to cut shader cost (≈1 ms to update, ~3 ms saved on PS4 in heavy views); the new landscape layer/spline system lets non‑destructive edits and toggleable stacks; a water spline system creates flowmaps, a localized fluid sim and foam; waves use a limited Gerstner waves set (6 on PC, 4 on mobile) and the quad‑tree Water Mesh for LOD, and everything is integrated into SkyAtmosphere and volume clouds.
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chapters (45)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:42Tools goals
- 1:26Disclaimer
- 1:37Topic breakdown
- 1:56Water: UE 4.26
- 2:07Sky & Atmosphere
- 2:19General Editing
- 2:45Runtime Virtual Texturing
- 3:29Streaming VT
- 4:04Lobby Volume 1
- 4:28Lobby Volume 2: Height
- 4:45Main Island Volume 1
- 6:15RVT includes roads - Terrain only
- 6:28RVT - Terrain + Static Meshes
- 6:46Road Spline Geometry
- 7:21Runtime VT - Fortnite setup
- 7:58Performance
- 8:22Useful debug - RVT mips
- 8:36Landscape Edit Layer System
- 9:52Landscape Splines
- 11:41Where to start
- 11:59Custom BP Brushes
- 12:36Blueprint setup
- 12:51Shape generation
- 13:22Custom Brush example
- 13:46Reorder Layer stack
- 13:58Custom Brush Caveat
- 14:22Water System
- 14:46New Water Spline
- 18:06Water Mesh Actor
- 18:45Material Setup
- 19:56Gerstner Waves
- 21:01Per Water Body Waves
- 22:44SingleLayerWater
- 23:20Fluid Simulation
- 26:00Fortnite uses new Sky Atmosphere
- 28:07Volumetric Clouds: 4.26
- 28:34Cloud Material
- 33:01Stylized test
- 33:19Grid-based editing
- 34:10One file per Actor: 4.26
- 34:31File contention
- 35:03Actor Foliage - paint Blueprints!
- 35:18Foliage Paint Actors
- 36:54Hierarchical Scattering
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