More Details About Paragon Unveiled During Twitch Stream

Epic Games will be running a live Twitch stream at 11 a.m. PST/2 p.m. EST today that goes in-depth on the company’s newly announced MOBA, Paragon. The stream will feature Sr. Programmer of Graphics Brian Karis and Lead Artist Jordan Walker, who will join Sr. Community Manager Chance Ivey and Community Manager Alexander Paschall to conduct an in-depth discussion on Paragon character art and rendering.

The company announced Paragon at the PlayStation Experience keynote address this past weekend. They had been offering teaser trailers for different hero characters leading up to the full announcement. The game will be available in paid Early Access in Spring 2016 and Open Beta in Summer 2016.

Here are a few technical details that Epic released about the Paragon trailer and the new technology powering it:

• Revealed at PlayStation Experience, this is the first asset built with Unreal Engine 4’s brand new cinematic tool, Sequencer, the successor to Unreal Matinee. Sequencer brings more ease of use to moviemaking in UE4 by dramatically improving the cinematic-building workflow in terms of layout and collaboration within the editor. A very early preview of Sequencer is available in4.10, with more functionality shipping in 4.11.

• Major UE4 rendering improvements include new shading for skin, eyes, hair and cloth.

• The trailer also exhibits new techniques for parallax occlusion mapping, procedural foliage and volumetric ray tracing.

• Use of light channels provides the ability to mask lights to only affect particular objects.

• Capsule dynamic soft shadows are used in the cinematic but perhaps best seen in theGameplay First Look trailer. This gives the characters broad soft shadows when in the shade to better integrate them into the scene, and makes them feel more grounded.

• Epic also uses Quixel MegaScan assets in Paragon to produce a more CG-like aesthetic.

Those interested in learning more about the upcoming MOBA from the creators of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War should tune in.

Paragon releases in 2016 for PlayStation 4 and PC.