Unlock stunningly realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections in your projects. This guide will walk you through the simple process of enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing in Unreal Engine.
First, go to the main menu bar at the top of the editor and click Edit > Project Settings. This will open a new window where you can configure your project's core settings.
In the Project Settings window, scroll down the left-hand panel until you find the Engine section. Click on Rendering to access all graphics-related settings.
Under the Hardware Ray Tracing section, check the box next to Support Hardware Ray Tracing. Ensure your project's Default RHI is set to DirectX 12 in the Platforms > Windows section.
A pop-up will appear at the bottom-right of your screen prompting you to restart the editor. Click Restart Now to apply the changes. The engine needs to recompile shaders, which may take some time.
After restarting, add a Post Process Volume to your scene. In its Details panel, enable and adjust ray tracing features like Reflections, Global Illumination, and Ambient Occlusion to see the effects in your viewport.
Pro Tips for Using Ray Tracing
Ray tracing requires a DirectX 12 compatible graphics card, such as an NVIDIA RTX (20-series or newer) or an AMD RX (6000-series or newer).
Enabling the project setting is just the first step. You must use ray tracing features in your lights (e.g., Cast Ray Traced Shadows) and Post Process Volume to see the results.
Ray tracing can be performance-intensive. Use the console command stat GPU to monitor the impact on your frame rate and optimize settings accordingly.
Unreal Engine's Lumen system can leverage hardware ray tracing for higher quality results. You can configure this under the Rendering settings for Global Illumination and Reflections.
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