Mesh2Motion Rigs 🦴, UE5 Bullets 🎯, AI in Unreal 🤖
đź•ą Retro Horror & Indie Craft
How Hollowbody Recreates PS2 Survival Horror with Modern Tools
Solo developer Nathan Hamley breaks down how he built Hollowbody, a technoir survival horror love letter to the PS2 era, using Unity and strict visual constraints. By limiting himself to diffuse textures, low-poly assets, and grounded, real-world-inspired layouts, he delivered a moody cyberpunk city that feels both retro and fresh. Hamley shares his lighting and audio workflows, reliance on tools like PlayMaker and Omnisphere, and hard-won lessons about prioritizing game feel over polish.
Mesh2Motion: Free Open-Source Mixamo Alternative Adds Creature Rigs
Mesh2Motion is a CC0-licensed Mixamo alternative that now rigs far more than just humans, including birds, dragons, spiders, kaiju, and foxes. You can import GLB, GLTF, DAE, or FBX models, apply the built-in rigs, then bundle multiple animations into a single GLB ready for engines like Godot, Three.js, or Babylon.js. All Blender rig and animation sources are on GitHub for you to tweak or extend. The included video walks through the “stupidly easy” workflow step by step.
⚙️ Smarter & Smoother Game Systems
How Big Farm Homestead Runs So Smoothly on Old Phones
A Unity livestream with New Moon Production dives into how they built and optimized Big Farm Homestead, a large, cozy farming sim spanning three biomes, to run well on everything from low-end Androids to high-end devices. The team shows their single-scene world broken into terrain chunks, ultra-lean textures, custom shaders, and heavy use of Unity’s profilers. They explain how Addressables keep the APK under 200MB and enable live updates, plus how UI safe areas, quality tiers, and even vertex-animated crabs all contribute to a stable, battery-friendly mobile experience.
Stop Spawning Actors for Every Bullet: Smarter Projectile Systems in UE5
Spawning an actor for every bullet works—until your game needs hundreds or thousands of projectiles. In this Inside Unreal session, Michael Royalty breaks down four projectile patterns, from simple actor‑based setups to high‑performance, data‑driven Multi‑Trace systems. You’ll see where pooling pays off, when traces beat actors, and why Multi‑Trace effectively demands C++. Along the way, he shares benchmark numbers, VFX integration tips with Niagara, and practical advice on faking what you can to keep your game feeling great.
🧠Next‑Gen Tools in Unreal Engine
Nwiro Integration Kit: Bring-Your-Own-AI Inside Unreal Engine
Nwiro’s Integration Kit lets Unreal Engine developers plug their existing AI tools—like Claude Code, Codex CLI, Meshy AI, and Tripo AI—directly into the editor. Instead of juggling browser tabs and separate apps, teams can script, debug, and generate assets with AI from inside Unreal. The plugin follows a bring-your-own-AI approach, so you keep using the services you already pay for. Sold as a one-time purchase, it streamlines real production workflows without adding another subscription.
Master Physically Based Lighting in UE5 with Arthur Tasquin’s New Episode
Arthur Tasquin has released a new chapter in his Unreal Engine 5 physically based lighting tutorial series, this time focused squarely on real production workflows. Through four detailed lighting studies, he shows how PBL theory translates into concrete techniques and where UE5’s physical accuracy starts to break down. To mark the release, his PBL Database plug-in—built from extensive lighting research—is on sale, giving artists powerful reference tools to build more realistic lighting.