5 key features for CG artists in Godot 4.4
The Godot team has released Godot 4.4, the latest version of the open-source game engine.
It’s another sizeable release, with improvements to core performance, and updates throughout Godot’s key toolsets, including changes to scripting, audio and platform integration.
Below, we’ve picked out five new features of particular significance to CG artists, as opposed to programmers, including updates to shading, lighting, rendering, animation and physics.
1. New game window lets you edit games directly while they’re running
For both artists and level designers, a key change in Godot 4.4 is that the game window is now embedded in the Godot Editor, making it possible to view the running game from the Editor.
Users can select objects within the game window, streamlining interactive in-game editing.
There are also a number of other nice quality-of-life updates to the Editor, including the option to snap 3D objects to one another while placing them in a level, to preview camera views directly in the Inspector, and a built-in material preview in the visual shader editor.
2. Updates to LightmapGI improve quality and performance of rendered shadows
In the lighting toolset, the LightmapGI node now supports baked shadowmasks.
The change makes it possible to use static shadows at a distance from the view camera, but dynamic shadows up close, improving performance without sacrificing realism.
LightmapGI also now supports bicubic sampling, resulting in smoother-looking baked shadows at a small performance cost, and supports baking tinted shadows from transparent objects.
3. AgX tonemapping gives a movie-like look to rendered images
For post-processing, Godot 4.4 now supports AgX tonemapping, for giving a movie-like look to rendered images, alongside the existing ACES and Filmic transforms.
The implementation is similar to that in Blender, where an AgX View Transform was added in Blender 4.0, but has been simplified for real-time use.
It is described as handling very bright scenes better than existing tonemapping modes.
4. Animation: new look-at, jiggle physics and animation marker systems
Animators get a number of new features, including a new look-at constraint system, with the new LookAtModifer3D node partially replacing the now-deprecated SkeletonIK3D.
For adding jiggle physics for characters’ hair and clothing, VRMSpringBone from the VRM format for 3D avatars, previously an add-on, is now integrated directly into the engine.
It is also now possible to place markers to create subregions of an animation that can be jumped to or looped without playing the entire animation.
5. Jolt physics is now built-in, not an extension
Another key change in Godot 4.4 is that Jolt, the open-source rigid body dynamics library used as the de facto physics engine by many developers, is now integrated directly into Godot.
Jolt, used on games including Horizon Forbidden West, was previously an extension.
The new built-in Jolt Physics module is still experimental, and is not yet as feature-complete as the existing Godot Physics system: you can find a list of differences in the online documentation.
However, the Jolt extension is now in maintenance mode, and will be deprecated once the native Jolt physics system reaches feature parity.
Other changes, performance improvements and platform support
There are also a number of improvements to scripting, including support for typed dictionaries, tooltips in the GDScript editor, and a new expression evaluator.
Core performance has been improved, with large projects loading “up to 3x” faster in the Editor.
Godot also now supports Apple’s Metal graphics API natively, rather than using MoltenVK to run Vulkan over Metal, which should improve performance on Apple Silicon processors.
Platform changes initial support for XR devices in the Android Editor. The Android Editor can also now generate and export binaries directly, rather than forcing users to switch to another OS.
License and system requirements
Godot 4.4 is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and 64-bit Linux and macOS. There are also browser-based and Android ports of the Godot Editor.
The source code is available under a MIT license
Read a full list of new features in Godot 4.4 on the Godot team’s blog
Download Godot from the game engine’s website
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