Nanite Tessellation: The Feature That Finally Shipped in Unreal Engine 5.4

Graphic Rants: Nanite Tessellation

Nanite Tessellation: The Feature That Finally Shipped in Unreal Engine 5.4

Brian Karis, the creator of Nanite, explains why he built Nanite Tessellation despite once arguing that amplification approaches aren't a general-purpose solution. It dynamically tessellates and displaces meshes using shader graphs, and shipped in UE 5.4 in 2024 after prototypes began in 2020. The post covers compression, authoring benefits, and why Fortnite's art teams prefer amplifying low-poly meshes up rather than simplifying high-poly ones down.

My argument was that amplification approaches are not a general purpose solution to the virtualized geometry problem. They do not solve all cases. They can't change the genus of a surface.
  1. jplusequalt

    There is dearth of intermediate to advanced level resources on graphics programming. Seeing something like this is always appreciated.

  2. cubefox

    The latest post was published in mid March. I wonder whether the remaining three are still coming.

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2026-09-14