Unreal Engine 5.7 has arrived with further improvements for creating large scale and highly detailed open worlds. This release streamlines open world development through expanded procedural tools, adds new features for managing foliage heavy environments, and provides deeper MetaHuman integration. Additionally, it includes an upgraded in editor animation toolset and enhancements for virtual production workflows.
As is becoming usual these days with software, Unreal Engine now also includes a new AI Assistant designed to help users perform tasks directly in the editor.
In this release, two major frameworks have reached production ready status: Procedural Content Generation (PCG) and Substrate.
Below is a brief summary of the key features and improvements included in this version:
Procedural Content Generation
In this release, the Procedural Content Generation framework (PCG) is now considered production ready. This framework enables users to populate environments faster, introduce natural variety, and deliver more engaging game experiences in a shorter time.
A new PCG Editor Mode has been added, providing a library of customizable tools built on the PCG framework, including spline drawing, point painting, and volume creation.
PCG also includes several performance improvements. GPU compute operations are significantly faster, and GPU parameter overrides are now supported, allowing parameter values to be adjusted dynamically when working with GPU nodes.
There is also a new Polygon2D data type and associated operators that bring enhanced flexibility, enabling the definition of closed areas that can be converted into surfaces or splines. New Spline Intersection and Split Splines operators have also been introduced.
Epic Games explains that PCG is a framework for users to build on, with the new Procedural Vegetation Editor (PVE) serving as an example. PVE is an experimental graph based tool for creating and customizing high quality vegetation assets, with optional direct output to Nanite skeletal assemblies.
Nanite Foliage
Nanite Foliage has been introduced as an experimental geometry rendering system designed for dense, high detail, foliage heavy environments in large open worlds, with efficient performance on current generation hardware.
The system uses Nanite Voxels, which automatically and efficiently render millions of small overlapping elements that appear as solid masses at a distance, such as tree canopies, pine needles, and ground clutter, while maintaining stable frame rates without cross fades, popping, or the need to author LODs.
Nanite Foliage also makes use of Nanite Assemblies to reduce storage, memory, and rendering costs, along with Nanite Skinning to determine dynamic behaviors such as wind response.
In addition to rendering Nanite Foliage compatible meshes generated by the Procedural Vegetation Editor (PVE), trees can also be imported from external applications through USD.
Substrate
Substrate, Unreal Engine's modular material authoring and rendering framework, has reached production ready status in this release.
The framework makes it possible to combine multiple material behaviors, including those found in metal, clear coat, skin, and cloth, with physically accurate results. This allows complex effects such as multi layered car paint, oiled leather, or moisture on skin to be created with high fidelity. It also provides detailed support for custom shading behaviors, enabling teams to define their own material logic without modifying the engine.
Substrate is fully integrated into the engine's lighting pipeline, producing consistent high quality results across all material types. It is designed to scale efficiently down to mobile hardware, maintaining performance and visual consistency across target platforms.
MegaLights
Megalights has moved from Experimental to Beta status. This direct lighting path, first introduced in Unreal Engine 5.5, allows a significantly larger number of dynamic shadow casting lights to be used in a scene, enabling effects such as realistic soft shadows from complex light sources like area lights.
Visual fidelity has been further improved in this release with support for directional lights, translucency, shadow casting for Niagara particles, and more accurate shading and shadowing on hair. There is also better out-of-the-box performance, improved noise reduction, and reduced need for manual light optimization.
MetaHuman
MetaHuman continues to offer deeper integration with both Unreal Engine and other pipeline tools. With this release, the MetaHuman Creator Unreal Engine plugin is now available on Linux and macOS, with MetaHuman Animator support for these platforms planned for a future update.
Editing and assembly operations for MetaHuman character assets can now be automated and batch processed using Python or Blueprint scripting, either interactively in Unreal Editor or offline on a compute farm.
The ability to conform meshes in varied poses has also been added, allowing the use of UV space vertex correspondence between the conform template and model meshes, supporting mesh round-tripping with external DCC tools via FBX.
Animation can be generated in real time, and performances can be recorded from an external camera connected to an iPad or Android device via Live Link Face, providing more compact and cost-effective real-time facial capture workflows.
Hair styling has also been improved, allowing the authoring and control of hair guides and strands using joint-based deformation, painting, and mesh-based manipulation, blending simulated hair physics with art-directed animation.
Additionally, MetaHuman for Houdini now features a guide-driven workflow for creating hairstyles using pre-authored data, with a set of adjustable preset hairstyles to serve as starting points for artists.
Animation
This release introduces a refactored Animation Mode to streamline workflows and optimize the use of screen real estate.
Selection Sets have been added, enabling multiple controls within a rig or across multiple assets to be selected with a single click, reducing repetitive and time-consuming tasks. These sets can also be mirrored automatically for both sides of a character, hidden or shown for better focus, and shared between team members.
The IK Retargeter has been enhanced with features that improve foot-to-ground contact, support retargeting of squash and stretch animations, and enable spatially aware retargeting operations to prevent self-collision and maintain contact points relative to character proportions.
The Skeletal Editor has been updated to allow seamless movement between placing bones, painting weights, and sculpting blend shapes on a skeletal mesh. With instant updates, building complex rigs with dozens or hundreds of shapes is now faster and more efficient.
Support for one-way physics world collisions has been added, allowing characters to interact realistically with objects in the environment for ragdolls, dynamic gameplay, and immersive animation testing.
Finally, a new Dependency View provides a node-based graph visualization of how data flows through a Control Rig or Modular Control Rig, making it faster and easier to debug or optimize complex control setups.
Virtual Production
For motion capture workflows, a new Dynamic Constraint Component for Props allows objects to automatically attach to hand positions, interpolating smoothly for natural results even during complex actions such as juggling. The Blueprint function can also be overridden to implement custom dynamic constraint logic and create specialized behaviors.
A new Live Link Broadcast Component enables Unreal Engine to act as a source of animation data across a network, supporting multi-machine virtual production and mocap stage workflows. This includes offloading retargeting tasks to another Editor session and broadcasting the results to the main scene. Actors can be added to the level and converted into Live Link subjects, streaming Transform, Camera, and Animation roles directly from the Editor.
An updated version of Composure, Unreal Engine’s built-in real-time compositing tool, has also been introduced. Now more accessible, Composure handles both live video input and file-based image media plates, delivering real-time results for film or video shoots at 24 fps. Updates include improved shadow and reflection integration for seamless blending of live-action and CG elements, as well as enhancements to the keyer.
AI Assistant
This release introduces a new AI Assistant that provides guidance on Unreal Engine directly within the Editor. A dedicated slide-out panel allows users to ask questions, generate C++ code, or follow step-by-step instructions. In addition to typing queries, the AI Assistant can be accessed like a tooltip: moving the cursor over an interface element and pressing F1 starts a conversation with the Assistant about that topic.
Unreal Engine 5.7 also provides access to tutorials, documentation, news, forums, and recent projects directly from the new Unreal Editor Home Panel. Those completely new to Unreal Engine can launch an interactive Getting Started sample directly in the Editor.
This is a summary of the highlight features and enhancements in Unreal Engine 5.7. The full feature list is available in the official release notes.
