After seven months of development, the release of the open-source game engine Godot 4.4 was launched, suitable for developing both 2D and 3D games. The engine offers an easy-to-learn language for creating game logic, a graphical interface for game development, one-click game deployment, as well as tools for animation and physics simulation. It includes a debugger and a performance analysis system. The engine’s source code, game development tools, and accompanying components, such as the physics engine, sound server, and rendering for 2D/3D, are available under the MIT license.
Below are five new features that are particularly important for CG artists, including updates in shading, lighting, rendering, animation, and physics.
1. The new game window allows you to edit games directly during runtime
A key update in Godot 4.4 for both artists and level designers is the integration of the game window into the Godot editor, allowing users to view the running game directly from the editor. Users can now select objects within the game window, simplifying interactive in-game editing.
The editor also includes several other useful updates to enhance the workflow, such as the ability to snap 3D objects together on the same level, view camera images directly in the inspector, and an integrated material preview in the visual shader editor.
2. Light magic updates improved shadow rendering quality and performance
In the lighting toolkit, the Lightmap node now supports built-in shadow masks. This change allows static shadows at a distance from the camera while maintaining dynamic shadows close up, improving performance without sacrificing realism.
LightmapGI now also supports bicubic sampling, providing smoother shadows with minimal performance cost, and supports shaded shadows from transparent objects.
3. AgX tone mapping gives visualized images a cinematic look
For post-processing, Godot 4.4 now supports AgX tone mapping, which gives rendered images a cinematic look, along with other existing improvements and cinematic transformations. The implementation is similar to what was introduced in Blender, where the AgX view transform was added in Blender 4.0, but it has been simplified for real-time use.
It is said to handle very bright scenes better than existing tone mapping modes.
4. Animation: New look, swinging physics, and animation marker systems
Animators now have access to several new features, including a new constraint system, while the new LookAtModifier3D node partially replaces the deprecated SkeletonIK3D. To add hair and clothing swing physics for characters, VRMSpringBone from the VRM format for 3D avatars, which was previously an add-on, is now directly integrated into the engine. Additionally, markers can now be placed to create animation subregions that can be transitioned to or looped without playing the entire animation.
5. Jolt Physics Now Integrated, Not an Add-On
Another key change in Godot 4.4 is that Jolt, an open-source rigid body dynamics library used by many developers as a physics engine, is now directly integrated into Godot. Jolt technology, used in games like Horizon Forbidden West, was previously an add-on.
The new built-in Jolt physics module is still experimental and not as fully featured as the existing Godot physics system. A list of differences can be found in the online documentation. However, the Jolt extension is now in maintenance mode and will be deprecated once the Jolt physics system reaches feature parity.
A number of improvements have also been made to scripting, including support for typed dictionaries, tooltips in the GDScript editor, and a new expression evaluator. The core performance has been improved, with large projects loading three times faster in the editor.
Godot now also supports the Apple Metal graphics API, rather than using MoltenVK to run Vulkan on top of Metal, which should improve performance on Apple processors. The platform has altered its initial support for XR devices in the Android editor. The Android editor can now also directly create and export binary files without requiring users to switch to another OS.
Godot 4.4 is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, as well as 64-bit versions of Linux and macOS. There are also editor versions available for browsers and Android. The source code is available under the MIT license.