With the following 9 plug-ins for the Unreal Engine (good software to create a 3D configurator) you can create your own video games.

The Unreal Engine offers an amazingly easy way to create your own visualizations or video games. To keep the work as simple as possible, there are a number of shaders, add-ons and assets, many of which can be found on the UE Marketplace.

In this article we give a brief overview of 9 helpful plug-ins for the Unreal Engine that help game designers add effects that would otherwise be too time-consuming to create or program by hand.

Substance Plug-Ins.

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If you create assets for games, you can`t avoid the Allegorithmic Substance Suite. Substance Designer and Painter are excellent tools that should be used by any designer.

The Substance plugin connects the apps and allows you to edit and modify textures as you work. The Substance workflow is rapidly becoming the industry standard for creating Physical Based Rendering (PRB) content, and if you`re an indie studio, you can use the entire suite – called Substance Live – for just $ 20 per month.

Neofur.

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The US company Neoglyphic recently released the real-time plug-in Neofur. Like other proprietary systems, the plug-in uses multiple process shells stacked tightly on top of each other to create the effect of fibers, a technique introduced in 2004.

The plug-in offers its users drag`n`drop control and can be applied to static and skeletal meshes that support operations such as ambient occlusion or dynamic shadowing. Neofur also offers the possibility to simulate für physics and supports the wind and radial forces of the Unreal Engine. So if you want to visualize furry characters, hair, vegetation or carpets, Neofur is a simple and quite affordable solution.

TrueSKY.

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Almost every game needs a sky, and although skyboxes can be rendered quite easily, trueSKY offers the possibility to bring a little more momentum into the game with a dynamic cloud landscape. The plugin offers volumetric real-time clouds with dynamic lighting and shadows, but runs fast and with low overhead on CPU and GPU. Users can determine the type of cloud cover, including altitude and density, plus wind speed and direction, and customize the exact appearance of the clouds, with control over fractal noise, turbulence and even rain.

Clouds are created that stir and disperse for a dreamlike photorealistic sky. Adding TrueSKY to prjects is easy and there are only a few knot connections to connect the lighting for day-night operation with the Unreal Engine. All in all, the final effect is quite remarkable.

VAOcean Plug-In.

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A realistic looking sky has already been created. Now we look at a plug-in to visualize realistic looking water. The VAOcean plug-in by Vladimir Alyamkin does just that by rendering displacement and normal maps in real time. The kit includes triangulated ocean nets that can be added to your project, as well as a water shader and a set of global shaders.

Althrough VAOcean seems to have been in the alpha phase for years, it is still under active development.

VICO Dynamics.

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The development studio Vico Games is working on a particle-based physics system based on the rope simulation technology developed for an upcoming wrestling game.

The plugin supports different tensions and tensile forces as well as particle-to-object and particle-to-particle interactions. It looks like VICO Dynamics is being actively improved and updates and a new video for version 1.1 will be uploaded soon.

Road Editor.

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The name says it all: With this plugin from Talos Studio, users can barricade lanes directly on a terrain mesh. They pull out the roadway shape as a spline and it automatically adjusts to the ground contours, but also creates embankments or breakthroughs in the landscape if required. You can add new splines for intersections and the road will be rebuilt as you drive.

It also has a node editor for creating markers, curbs and signposts, as well as adding specific curve types or intersections. For games that increasingly visualize roads in the game, the plug-in is of high value.

PopcornFX.

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The recently released plug-in establishes a connection between Unreal Engine and the standalone PopcornFX editor. The editor is available for free download and allows users to create and modify any number of particle effects – from butterfly swarms to lightning twigs to fire and smoke, explosions or rifle fire… Users can determine it themselves.

The finished effect is saved and then imported into the UE with the plugin, so you can change its attributes as you like. If you need major changes, just go back to the PopcornFX editor, make your changes, save the effect and it will automatically be imported back into UE.

Dungeon Architect.

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With this ingenious plugin from indian developer Ali Akbar, users can create levels either procedurally or manually and automate most of the steps so they can quickly build and iterate their game design.

Thanks for reading.