Pterosoft Studio has released its new Voxel GI Plugin for Unreal Engine 5, bringing real-time voxel-based global illumination, glossy indirect reflections, and ray-traced mirror reflections into a single rendering plugin.
The plugin is designed for Unreal Engine 5.8 and gives developers an alternative global illumination solution focused on performance, flexibility, and high-quality dynamic lighting. It uses a sparse voxel octree to capture indirect bounce light across the scene without requiring baked lightmaps or manually placed light probes.
Global Illumination, Voxelized
Modern real-time rendering often forces developers to choose between lighting quality and performance. Pterosoft Studio’s Voxel GI Plugin was created to reduce that compromise.
The plugin combines three rendering systems:
Voxel Diffuse GI
Voxel Diffuse GI captures indirect bounce lighting across the scene using a sparse voxel octree. This allows environments to react dynamically to lighting changes without relying on baked lighting. For projects with changing time of day, moving lights, destructible environments, or fully dynamic scenes, this creates a more flexible lighting pipeline.
Voxel Specular GI
The plugin also supports voxel-based specular global illumination. This helps resolve glossy indirect reflections for rough metals, polished surfaces, and semi-reflective materials. Instead of limiting indirect lighting to diffuse surfaces, the system also contributes to the reflective character of the scene.
Ray-Traced Reflections
For mirror-like surfaces where voxel resolution is not enough, the plugin layers ray-traced reflections on top. This gives developers cleaner and more accurate reflections for highly reflective materials while keeping voxel GI as the main performance-focused global illumination solution.
Built for Real-Time Performance
The Voxel GI Plugin was built with performance as a core goal. In Pterosoft Studio’s reference scenes, the plugin reached 110 FPS at 1080p and 42 FPS at 4K.
In the same benchmark, the plugin performed faster than Lumen in the tested scenes, with a reported 25% performance advantage at 1080p and 40% at 4K. These results were captured in-engine, with benchmark hardware including an AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU, 32 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 GPU.
Actual performance will vary depending on scene complexity, hardware, resolution, content structure, and project settings. However, the benchmark reflects the main goal of the plugin: to provide a fast, dynamic GI solution for Unreal Engine projects that need strong lighting results without excessive runtime cost.
A Drop-In Lighting Solution for Unreal Engine 5.8
The Fab release of the plugin is designed as a compiled, drop-in solution for Unreal Engine 5.8 projects. Developers can use it to add voxel diffuse GI, voxel specular GI, and ray-traced reflections without building a custom renderer from scratch.
The release includes:
- Precompiled Win64 binaries
- Voxel diffuse global illumination
- Voxel specular global illumination
- Ray-traced reflections
- Marketplace updates
- Community support
The Fab version is priced at $149.99 per single seat.
Custom Licensing for Studios
Alongside the Fab release, Pterosoft Studio also offers a custom license for studios with more advanced rendering requirements.
This option is intended for teams working with custom Unreal Engine forks, in-house rendering pipelines, or projects that need deeper integration support. The custom license can include full plugin source code, dedicated implementation support, custom engine-fork integration, a priority support channel, and flexible seat or royalty terms.
Designed for Dynamic Worlds
The Voxel GI Plugin is especially useful for projects where lighting cannot be fully baked. Open environments, horror games, sci-fi interiors, simulation projects, architectural visualization, and gameplay-heavy scenes can all benefit from a dynamic global illumination system that reacts in real time.
For Pterosoft Studio, the plugin also reflects a broader rendering philosophy: high-end lighting should not be limited only to the most expensive hardware or to highly constrained scenes. By combining voxel GI with ray tracing where it matters most, the plugin aims to deliver a practical balance between visual quality and runtime performance.
Availability
The Pterosoft Studio Voxel GI Plugin for Unreal Engine 5 is now available through the official plugin website:
https://unrealvoxel.pterosoftstudio.com
Developers can choose between the standard Fab release and a custom licensing option for studio-level integration.
