Kythera AI for Unreal Engine
An advanced suite of AI tools for navigation and behaviorKythera AI for Unreal Engine provides studios with an advanced AI toolset with more than a decade of continuous development behind it. With a suite of features suitable for any environment across various genres, Kythera AI can save studios time and money with out-of-the-box integration.
Kythera AI for Unreal Engine empowers users to create immersive environments populated with non-playable characters that understand and dynamically react to the world around them.
DESIGNED TO BE INTUITIVE FOR UNREAL DEVELOPERS
Kythera AI integrates seamlessly with Unreal Engine's editor. The solution offers tools that make creating easy, and a user interface designed to be straightforward for UE trained developers, making the process of editing and debugging the feature set frictionless. Key features, like Kythera AI's Navigation Splines, have been designed so that using them is easy and intuitive for those with previous experience with the Unreal Engine tools, like the Unreal Engine Spline tool. The solution interoperates smoothly with Unreal Engine, so developers can choose to enhance their game with Kythera AI no matter how late in the development cycle they are!
INTEGRATES SEAMLESSLY WITH UNREAL'S FEATURES AND WORKFLOW
Kythera AI offers its own sophisticated solution to create and edit behavior trees, but many of its AI features can also be accessed and extended via Unreal's Blueprint system - so developers can author Kythera AI Behavior Tree nodes using Unreal Blueprints. This provides a quick and easy way to prototype behavior changes that depend directly on game state.
Kythera AI provides a powerful Spatial Query System (SQS) while also offering support for Unreal’s Environmental Query System (EQS). Developers can continuously extend EQS’s abilities with Kythera AI features.
BUILT ON A ROBUST FRAMEWORK
The Kythera AI toolset has been under continuous development for over a decade, and provides mature tools built with performance in mind.
The feature set offers widespread support for asynchronous and multithreaded execution. Its advanced component-based entity system ensures data remains cache-coherent and allows developers to include only the capabilities they need!
Features
Unreal Engine provides developers with an expansive array of game creation tools. With frequent updates and widespread use across several platforms, Unreal Engine is a formidable asset for any development team – and the Kythera AI plugin makes it even more powerful.
Get in touch to find out which features are best for your game.
FLIGHT NAVIGATION
AI that understands its environment to guide agents in dense, dynamic three-dimensional worlds.
Whether a game is set amongst the stars, or in the depths of the ocean, Flight Navigation is a robust and performant solution guiding creatures and vehicles that confidently fly and fight in dense, open environments.
Lightning-fast, asynchronous pathfinding ensures that Kythera AI powered agents can automatically navigate complex maps, while tools like Kythera AI's Navigation Splines allow designers to opt for precise control over agent movement and flight - so studios can automate where they need, and take control where they want!
Capable of regenerating at runtime, this solution enables studios to create dynamic worlds with responsive enemy agents, for deeper, more immersive gameplay and unique player experiences.
GROUND NAVIGATION
With the Kythera AI toolset for Ground Navigation, developers can author NPCs that intelligently navigate complex terrain, from vast areas to confined spaces. Kythera AI Ground Navigation is designed with performance and extensibility in mind. Both powerful and highly configurable, it helps to automate repetitive processes while including many optional features that allow it to be tailored perfectly to any project.
Underpinning the Ground Navigation solution is Kythera AI’s automatically generating NavMesh which instantly generates Navigation Mesh that responds to changes in the environment, regenerates at runtime and automatically optimizes the NavMesh across vast areas. Innovative features like the Kythera AI Spatial Query System add intelligent decision-making to agents' behaviors, powering enemies that will challenge players and create memorable play experiences.
AUTOMATIC COVER GENERATION
Automatic Cover Generation (AutoCover) intelligently analyzes level geometry to generate high-quality cover rails along terrain edges or surfaces, with no manual marking required. The generated cover rails are updated automatically along the underlying navigation mesh, which updates as the terrain changes. The feature comes with multiple Cover Categories for varying degrees of cover that can be generated out of the box, or allows developers to create and configure their own Cover Categories, giving studios everything they need to speed up their workflow without sacrificing quality or control.
AUTOMATIC NAVIGATION LINK GENERATION
Automatic Navigation Link Generation (AutoNav) intelligently analyzes level geometry to automatically generate navigation links. This allows AI agents to traverse the Navigation Mesh by performing actions like jumping over objects or climbing up to higher levels with no manual markup required. AutoNav gives designers full control to configure the conditions that define where navigation links should be created across the game, so developers can quickly populate their game world with NPCs that enact realistic navigation behavior. AutoNav saves studios time by minimizing the effort required to place NavMeshLinks - no matter the number to be placed across the game or how often they are changed throughout development!
Pictured: The combat demo level showcasing navigation mesh links, cover rails, and the tiles of a navigation mesh.
FEATURES THAT OPTIMIZE PERFORMANCE AND EFFICIENCY
Kythera AI for Unreal Engine is designed with performance and extendability in mind. Features like NavMesh Partitioning, which integrates with Unreal's World Partitioning, and automatic NavMesh Pruning, which detects and removes unreachable sections of navigation mesh, allowing Kythera AI users to benefit from advanced solutions for large world management. Kythera AI's Inspector is a web-based tool enabling developers to configure and monitor aspects of Kythera AI as the game is running. Developers can edit behavior trees and change configuration settings live and see the behavioral change right away, without needing to recompile or restart the editor, creating a fast and efficient developer workflow.
RESOURCES TO SUPPORT GAME SUCCESS
All Kythera AI solutions come with access to a comprehensive collection of fully documented demo levels providing real use cases for Kythera AI. These demo levels demonstrate behaviors authored with Unreal Engine, as well as Ground, Flight, and Surface Savigation, AutoNav, AutoCover, powerful spatial queries, and showcase various AI characters who use all these features to think, strategize, and outwit each other.
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