The Havok 2023.2 release includes our three main games middleware products, AI, Cloth and Physics as well as our Unreal Engine integrations.

Across those products there were 176 updates including 8 New Features, 91 Improvements and 77 Bug Fixes. For a full list see the attached Release Notes.

These products have been delivered across a total of 18 targets across 10 platforms.

In addition we have updated our Unreal Engine 5.3 integrations for all products and also added new functionality and fixes.

Release Highlights

AI path smoothing

A new utility allows users to adjust the optimal paths found by Havok AI to better match the locomotion styles of a character's animation set, including adapting to minimum turning radii and incorporating desires for initial movement direction or goal approach. This makes integration with animation systems more robust, and in-game behavior more believable, as artistic choices for NPC gait and weight are better preserved in the final in-game motion.

Screenshot of the result of applying the new utility to the results of a path query to get a more realistic trajectory. — Screenshot of a demo illustrating an optimal shortest path being adjusted to a more realistic trajectory by the new utility. The resulting path correctly 'rounds' all corners by limiting the tightness of the turns taken so that it does not exceed the minium turning radius for that character.

Cloth Tool logging improvements

The logging systems inside the Cloth Setup Tool and Filter Manager have been overhauled to better highlight potential errors or inefficiencies in cloth setups, so that users can quickly self-diagnose and address. Significant changes includes reduction of duplicated log info, improvements to log filtering control, and addition of inline object links within the messages to help users 'one-click' directly to the problematic objects.

Screenshot of the CST UI's log information in the console showing clickable links which guide the user directly to the setup info which needs adjustment — Output logging information now contains direct clickable links to the input data which needs correction or adjustment.

Cloth Tool export, verify and preview optimizations

Several core optimizations in the export, preview and validation phases of the Cloth export pipeline have been made to give faster processing of detailed mesh inputs. Notably, for high-vertex count meshes, users exporting from Autodesk Maya should see 2-10x faster export time if using Smooth Skin Binding, and all users should see up to 5x faster verification and preview times.

Physics performance optimizations for densely populated scenes

Numerous optimizations have been made in this release for handling modifications/updates to both static and keyframed bodies much more efficiently in scenarios when the number of bodies is large. These improvements now allow for much higher object counts, up to an order of magnitude, for these types of bodies, and so can support creation of scenes with both denser environmental geometry and simulation of more and more-complex animated objects, without bottlenecks.

Unreal Engine 5.3 Integrations

Since the Havok 2023.1 release there have been a large number of improvements made in Unreal Engine integrations of the Havok SDK products.

The Havok AI Unreal plugin has added numerous improvements for nav volumes to better support character navigation in 3d space such as for flying characters - these include addition of support for the Environment Query System (EQS) and World Partitions as well as several additions to nav volume query and path prediction functionality.

Screenshot of Havok nav volume query results around the EQS testing pawn in Unreal Engine — Visualization of the Havok nav volume query results around the EQS testing pawn in Unreal Engine.

The Havok Cloth Unreal plugin now supports in-editor tweaking of Havok cloth parameters for faster tuning of cloth behavior, as well as easier runtime hotswapping of simulation parameters for use-cases which require dynamic updates to cloth behavior, such as during cinematics.

Screenshot of Unreal Editor UI for the new asset type, showing how values such as gravity can be easily tweaked as the changes to behavior take place immediately in the simulation shown in the viewport. — The new HavokClothTweakAsset type allows users to easily modify cloth simulation parameters and see the resultant effect immediately in-editor. The example above illustrates improving the feeling of weight in the cape asset (shown on left) by increasing its gravity parameter (shown on right)

The Havok Physics integration takes advantage of all the SDK optimizations noted above for scenes with large numbers of static or animated bodies, and now also supports the Tick Physics Async setting to allow fixed physics step length and more parallel simulation. In addition, the Havok Niagara plugin has improved usability with per-particle collision, friction, and restitution, as well as support for mixing different simulation types in the same system.

Visualization of the Havok nav volume query results around the EQS testing pawn in Unreal Engine.

Screenshot of Niagara particles of multiple different shapes colliding with each other as well as the environment when simulated using Havok Physics Particles — Niagara particles of multiple different shapes can now also collide with each other as well as the environment when simulated using Havok Physics Particles.

The release also contains an early preview of our new Havok Collision Proxy system, an Unreal Engine tool designed to reduce scene body count and collision mesh complexity using the Havok SDK's remeshing utilities.

⚠ This feature is currently in Beta, as we anticipate workflow and usability improvements in subsequent releases."

Havok 2023.2 is now available