Havok Physics for Unreal brings our industry leading rigid body simulation to Unreal Engine. Let’s look at how it works, how you can get the product, and how we stay in lock step with Unreal Engine Releases.

Havok Physics for Unreal consists of two layers: Havok Physics SDK and the Unreal Engine integration layer.

The integration layer is the interface between the core Havok Physics SDK and Unreal Engine that allows us to bring our physics implementation and feature set into the engine. It is provided and updated by the Havok team; however, all customers have access to the integration source code to make their own changes.

Havok Physics for Unreal is an engine level integration meaning you are required to rebuild Unreal Engine to use it. Havok Physics for Unreal integrates directly into the Unreal Physics API layer, with all Havok code being cleanly wrapped to allow for a seamless swap from the default physics system.

You can choose between two main ways to integrate Havok Physics for Unreal into your engine depending on whether your team uses the standard Unreal Engine build or makes custom engine level modifications. We’ll look at those soon, but first, let’s look at how to get Havok Physics for Unreal.

There are two main ways to get Havok Physics for Unreal: through GitHub or through our partner branch on the Epic Perforce. To access either of these you first need access to the Unreal Engine source code from Epic, and once that has been established, we can open our repo/branch for evaluation.

Havok Physics for Unreal is updated within two weeks of every Unreal Engine release. The full product is updated to work with the latest changes to the engine and is made available on GitHub in this timeframe.

Havok Physics for Unreal also updates twice yearly with the release of the Havok Physics SDK. SDK updates use the naming “Havok 202X.Y.Z” and are included in the release tags on GitHub so you can always tell which Havok Physics SDK version you are using.

These updates aim to bring as much functionality as possible from the Havok Physics SDK to Havok Physics for Unreal as quickly as possible.

If you are using the standard Unreal Engine build for development then installing Havok Physics for Unreal is easy. The Havok GitHub provides a full engine build, so you can follow the installation instructions to sync the GitHub branch, drop the required Havok folders into the relevant directories, and run a build script. Once the engine has finished building, you can immediately start working on your game with Havok Physics for Unreal. We provide windows packages as standard, and other platforms are available on request after proof of partnership with relevant platform holders.

If you are making engine level customizations to Unreal Engine, then integrating Havok is slightly different. As expected, you will need to merge Havok changes from the provided GitHub or Perforce into your own engine build for Havok Physics for Unreal to run. Since the Havok code is cleanly wrapped this merge should be relatively simple, if you have an engineer comfortable with making engine level customization then there shouldn’t cause any difficulty.

For both use cases, migrating a project to Havok Physics for Unreal is relatively seamless. There are no changes to workflow, no custom blueprints to call, and no reskilling required. If your game is a highly detailed physics puzzle with parameters tweaked to very exact requirements, then you’ll likely need to fine-tune some of these to get the exact behavior again. However, most games require no changes to see immediate improvements.

Beyond bringing our industry leading, performant, and robust physics simulation to Unreal Engine, using Havok Physics for Unreal also unlocks a variety of functionality available in the base SDK, some of which include:

• Havok Physics Particles (fully integrated into Niagara)
• Direct Solver
• Compound entanglement resolution
• Convex Decomposition
• Remeshing Tools

For more information on the features available in Havok Physics for Unreal, see the product webpage, and to see it in action, check our demos on youtube linked below.