Dash 1.8.5 (Beta)
This new update focuses on Fab support in Dash, and brings along the way a couple of small and major features that improve your world building process. From simple incremental rotations that make structures like parked cars easier to create, to more advanced systems like the new data table properties, we've squeezed a bunch of things ahead of 1.9, and hope you enjoy!
FAB Support: Intuitive Megascans Workflow
Epic recently released Fab, a marketplace which combines Quixel, Sketchfab, Unreal Marketplace, and Arstation's Marketplace. There's a native UE5 plugin for 5.3+, but it's an unfortunately slow, limited and unintuitive experience, and we've heard you on that: You want your Dash experience with Quixel content to be intact, and that's exactly what we're giving you with this update.
We've built a Fab integration that sits right inside Dash, and shows you the Fab website through which you can download assets, and have them show up automatically in Dash's content browser. This works in UE5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5. Features like displacement & tessellation are also automatically supported anytime you downlaod a high/raw Quixel asset tier!
You can also download assets from the official Epic Games Fab plugin, and those assets will show up automatically in Dash. Fab doesn't actually copy the assets in your project, and instead seems to store some cached version. If you drag & drop assets from Dash's content browser, this isn't an issue: We load the assets in your project, and everything runs smoothly from there.
This integration is in its infancy, and will be further refined in 1.9. Long term, our goal is to ensure that world building remains a fun, fast and efficient process, regardless of your assets' origins.
Data Tables: Complex Environments, the Easy Way
Dash features an extensive feature set that could greatly benefit from layering as many effects as you want, from stacking as many proximity masks as you want to deforming your terrain with multiple curves and much, much more. This is now possible with Data Tables.
The idea is fairly simple: You click on Edit Table in the tool you're using, then hit the + icon, and start adjusting the properties as you see fit. You can hit that + icon again to create another layer, and continue doing that as many times as you want.
This is an experimental feature, and right now we've made it work for the following features:
Proximity Masking: You can have unlimited amount of objects used as masks, each having their own distance and other logic.
Landscape Layer Masking: Specify the name of a landscape layer, like "grass" or "cliff", and scale that to 1 or 100 layers if needed.
Noise Mask: Layer multiple noises as your scatter masks, with each entry having its own frequency, scale, etc...
Terrain Curves: Deform your terrain with curves, and use data tables to have different curves with different deformation behavior for each.
In the next release, we'll make this feature available to a lot more systems in Dash. We're also going to further tweak the design of this new data tables panel. With the right ease of use and workflows, this will usher novel workflows in Dash unlike anything we've had before.
Materials Workflow Documentation
Dash comes with a set of intuitive base materials, and an extensive blend material that's ideal for world building. We've added an extensive documentation that helps you get the most out of it, from basic setup to UE5-specific configurations like Nanite tessellation, and much more.
Visit Material Authoring Documentation
Sophon: Revamped AI Assistant
In 1.8 we shipped a neat little AI assistant, and the reception around it has been amazing. In this update we've given it the name Sophon, and made it drastically more accurate. It can also suggest actions to directly call tools/features of Dash, and is much, much better at linking you to the right documentation sections in case you want to read more. Long form conversations are also possible, which means you can have one session that discusses a workflow in multiple back & forth messages.
Proximity Width
Proximity masking in our scatter tools is perhaps the most appreciated feature of our ecosystem, and this new feature makes it easier than ever to create strips of scattered objects, without having to juggle between multiple proximity masks or references. This feature is available in Surface Scatter, Path Scatter, Decal Scatter and Grid Scatter.
Terrain Deformation: Curves & Height Maps
Dash has a terrain creation workflow that gives you a mesh, and so far it has been limited to basic noise patterns. With this update, you can now deform your terrain with as many curves as you want, with falloff and tapering features that make it easy to sculpt landscapes with ease. We've also added an experimental height map support, and will expand on it further in 1.9.
Incremental Spin
Being able to create ordered rotations is a crucial part of world building, whether it's constraining cars in a parking lot to specific rotation increments, or simply having a broader scatter setup obey more consistent orientation rules. We introduce in Dash 1.8.5 exactly that: The ability to orient objects towards specific values, and keeping those values in order or randomized. As an example, you could write "0 90" in the property, and we'll pick one of those values and assign it to each scatter object. If sorting is checked, we'll assigning them in an ordered fashion, which is particularly useful when relying on tools like Grid Scatter.
This feature is available in Surface Scatter, Decal Scatter and Grid Scatter. Path Scatter already has an extensive orientation workflow, hence why this feature isn't there.
Simplified Baking Workflow
"Baking" is the term we use for converting instances into individual static meshes, or custom Dash meshes into native UE5 static meshes. In this update, we've simplified the workflow to make it easy to bake the instances or geometry of any tool, all just a click away.
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