What Vilanel can do
A complete 3D engine built from the ground up: a modern Vulkan renderer, a physically based sky, visual scripting, a full animation system, multiplayer, and an editor that ties it all together. Every screenshot on this page was captured from the engine.
Modern Vulkan rendering
A GPU-driven renderer that keeps large, detailed scenes running fast. The graphics card decides what is visible and how much detail to draw, which leaves the CPU free for gameplay.
- GPU-driven culling and detail levels
- Visibility testing, level of detail and skinning all run on the GPU, shadows included, so scenes can grow without the CPU becoming the bottleneck.
- Lots of dynamic lights
- Clustered lighting lets every surface be lit by many lights at once, with shadows from the sun, spot lights and point lights, and glass and other transparent materials that render correctly.
- Baked global illumination
- Bake lightmaps with light bouncing between surfaces, including colour bleeding from coloured walls, and use reflection probes so interiors look and reflect the way they should.
- Cinematic post-processing
- Ambient occlusion, bloom, depth of field, motion blur, colour grading, temporal anti-aliasing and physically based exposure, adjustable for each level and each area of it.
(opens the full-size image)A living, physically based sky
The sun, sky, clouds and weather are simulated together using real-world light values, so every hour of the day and every kind of weather looks right without hand-tuning.
- Dynamic time of day
- The sun and moon move in real time, and the lighting, sky colour and exposure follow them from sunrise, through sunset, into the night.
- Volumetric clouds
- Fully 3D clouds that cast shadows across the world, glow at sunset and thicken as the weather turns.
- Weather that changes
- Plan a day of weather, from clear skies to scattered clouds, overcast or storms, and the sky moves smoothly between them. The wind carries the clouds and the fog together.
- Night skies
- A real star field and a moon with phases that lights the world after dark.
- Photographed skies
- Light a level with an HDR photograph of a real sky instead, and it still matches the brightness of everything else in the scene.
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(opens the full-size image)Visual scripting for gameplay
Build gameplay without writing code. Actor classes combine components, variables and event graphs into reusable building blocks, and C++ is there when a project needs more.
- Reusable actor classes
- Each class bundles its components, variables and logic into a single asset. Place it in a level, spawn it while the game runs, or build new classes on top of it.
- Event graphs
- React to input, overlaps, timers and your own custom events, with delays, functions, local variables and a large library of ready-made gameplay nodes.
- Characters that feel good to control
- A ready-made character with smooth acceleration, jumping, crouching and going prone, and a third-person camera that moves in when a wall gets in the way. A game mode sets the rules for each level and decides which character each player controls.
- C++ with hot reload
- When a project needs native code, write C++ classes and components. Rebuild, and the new code is loaded while the editor keeps running, without losing the state of the game.
(opens the full-size image)A complete animation system
Animation Blueprints bring together state machines, blend spaces, montages and IK, with a dedicated editor for every part of the animation pipeline.
- State machines
- Build movement and actions as states connected by transitions, each with its own blend, and see exactly which state a character is in while the game runs.
- Blend spaces
- Blend walking, jogging and running smoothly by speed and direction. Clips can be placed automatically by measuring how they actually move.
- Montages
- Play one-off animations such as attacks or emotes on top of a character's movement, blending smoothly in and out.
- Root motion and foot IK
- Let animations drive movement so feet never slide, and let feet adapt to stairs, slopes and uneven ground automatically.
- Clip editor
- Add events, sounds, curves and footstep markers to any animation on a timeline, and preview the result instantly.
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(opens the full-size image)A visual UI designer
Design menus, HUDs and inventory screens visually, then bring them to life with their own event graphs.
- A full widget library
- Buttons, sliders, text fields, checkboxes, dropdowns, lists, trees, tabs, progress bars, tooltips and rich text, all styled consistently.
- Every language
- Right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew, proper line breaking, and built-in translation tables for every piece of text.
- Crisp text
- Text is rendered sharply at the exact size it is displayed, at any interface scale.
- Fast with lots of data
- Lists with thousands of entries stay smooth, because only the rows on screen are ever built.
(opens the full-size image)An editor built for fast iteration
A dockable, customisable editor where every asset opens in its own workspace, and pressing Play takes you straight into the game.
- Purpose-built asset editors
- Levels, classes, animations, materials and interfaces each open in their own editor, with a layout that is remembered.
- Play in the editor
- Test instantly in the viewport or in separate windows, with one player or several connected over the network.
- Fast level editing
- Select several objects across the viewport, hierarchy and content browser, move, rotate and scale them with gizmos, and click icons to pick lights, cameras and sounds.
- Find anything
- Search every panel, and press Ctrl+K to run any command by name.
- Undo everything
- Every change can be undone, including deletions, which bring objects back exactly as they were.
(opens the full-size image)A smooth asset pipeline
Drop in models, textures and sounds and the engine takes care of the rest, converting them in the background and keeping every reference intact.
- Import from anywhere
- glTF, FBX and OBJ models, textures, HDR skies and audio, imported with a file picker or by dragging files onto the editor.
- Always up to date
- Change a texture or model in your art tool and everything that uses it updates automatically.
- References that never break
- Move and rename assets freely, and levels and classes will still find them.
- Custom shaders
- Write your own material shaders in Slang, building on the engine's lighting, in a built-in code editor that highlights errors where they occur.
- Ready-to-ship builds
- Package a project into a standalone build that runs without the editor.
(opens the full-size image)Built-in multiplayer
Networking is part of the core gameplay framework, so a game can go online without being rebuilt around it.
- Responsive controls
- Client-side prediction makes your own character react instantly, with smooth corrections from the server.
- Smooth for everyone
- Other players move smoothly on your screen, even over an imperfect connection.
- Efficient updates
- Each player only receives updates about what is relevant to them.
- Flexible hosting
- Host a game from a player's machine, run a dedicated server, or connect players directly to each other.
- Easy testing
- Run several players side by side straight from the editor.
The Hub
Your starting point for every project: browse and create projects, and manage installed engine versions.
- All your projects in one place
- See every project with its thumbnail, size and engine version, and open any of them with one click.
- Start from a template
- Create a new project from a blank template, or from one set up for C++.
- Several engine versions
- Keep more than one engine version installed, and each project opens in the version it was made with.
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(opens the full-size image)Everything else
Physics
Rigid bodies, joints and motors, ragdolls, vehicles and cloth, powered by Jolt Physics, plus a character controller built specifically for games.
Navigation and AI
Navigation meshes baked from your level, crowds that steer around each other, and AI built from state trees that can see and hear the player.
Audio
3D positional sound, mixing buses, streaming music and ambience, and a live mixer for balancing everything while the game runs.
Input
Keyboard, mouse and gamepad controls mapped to actions, the right button prompts for every controller, rumble, and support for local multiplayer.
Level streaming
Split large worlds into sections that load in as the player approaches and unload once they have moved on.
Save games
Named save slots and persistent player settings, written safely so a crash in the middle of saving never corrupts a save.
Localisation and accessibility
Translate every piece of text, and offer subtitles, interface scaling and colour-vision options so more people can play.
Profiling and crash reports
Built-in GPU and CPU timings, stutter tracking and crash reports tied to the exact build, so performance problems can be found and fixed quickly.