UE5 Cameras 🎮, Fortnite MetaSounds 🎧, TexturingXYZ 🧑🎨
🎮 Engine & Tools Deep Dives
UE5 SceneCapture vs Camera: Why FOVs Don’t Match (And How to Fix It)
If your portals, mirrors, or “ghost world” overlays in UE5 break when the aspect ratio changes, this article explains exactly why. It walks through Unreal’s camera and SceneCapture render paths, showing that the main camera preserves vertical FOV while SceneCapture effectively locks horizontal FOV, causing subtle framing drift. The author derives the right FOV formulas and then implements a custom MaintainAxisCaptureComponent2D that mirrors the camera’s Maintain Axis behavior via a custom projection matrix. The result: predictable, resolution-independent matching between SceneCapture and gameplay camera.
Epic Releases Fortnite’s MetaSounds Tools as Free UE5 Plug-in
Unreal Engine 5 audio creators can now tap into Epic’s own MetaSounds production toolkit with the new TechAudioTools Content plug-in on FAB. Built from tools used on Fortnite, this collection streamlines large-scale MetaSounds workflows through editor utilities and reusable UI widgets. It focuses on practical production tasks like parameter migration, documentation upkeep, and fast SFX iteration. Epic will update the plug-in over time and expand it beyond MetaSounds, backed by new official tutorials.
🧠 Smart Techniques & Performance
Faking 3D Enemies: A Clever 2.5D Trick for Action Games
Game developer RDStoat shared a neat trick for making flat 2D enemies feel fully 3D in a third-person 2.5D action game. By having segmented 2D pieces move with the camera, the enemies appear three-dimensional, solving challenges like dodging attacks and circling around a “flat” foe. The piece also points to RDStoat’s ongoing dev updates on Reddit and showcases Guillaume Scoffié’s stylish 2.5D art for puzzle platformer NODE.
When Reader-Writer Locks Go Wrong: How a Seqlock Saved 40s of CPU Time
A C# app with tens of thousands of reads and only two writes was still burning ~40–50 seconds of CPU time contending on ReaderWriterLockSlim. Profiling reveals that all “readers” serialize on the lock’s internal spinlock and state management, turning a concurrency helper into a bottleneck. The author first replaces it with a minimalistic unfair RW lock, then with a seqlock using a simple sequence counter. That final design makes readers effectively lock-free and slashes contention to zero under normal loads.
🛠️ Workflows & UI Improvements
SKAP Phase 2: TexturingXYZ Launches Fully Autonomous Skin Detail Service
SKAP, TexturingXYZ’s high-detail skin map generator, is entering Phase 2 and evolving into a fully autonomous online service. A new dedicated website will let artists process their assets end-to-end without manual intervention. Private beta access starts next Tuesday, with invites rolling out daily from the waitlist. A 3D Napoleon reimagining by Ivailo Ivanov showcases the platform’s production-ready quality for freelancers, small studios, and larger teams.
Unity Input System + UI Toolkit: Dynamic Rebindable Controls Menu Tutorial
GameDev Guide’s Matt demonstrates how to create a modern control setup in Unity that players can actually customize. Starting from a basic 2D URP ship controller, he configures cross-device input, then uses UI Toolkit’s data binding and a custom binding class to auto-build a scrollable controls list. The video then adds support for switching between action-map presets, interactive rebinding of individual keys/buttons, and persistence of these overrides between sessions. It’s a practical blueprint for robust, player-friendly input settings.