Epic Games has released Unreal Engine 5.7, introducing the new Nanite Foliage geometry rendering system and bringing both the Procedural Content Generation (PCG) framework and the Substrate modular material authoring and rendering framework to production-ready status.
The move offers improvements to virtual production workflows, introduces a new AI Assistant for guidance directly in the Editor and more.
In a blog post, Epic Games said: “Unreal Engine 5.7 is here, bringing you the tools you need to build expansive, lifelike worlds filled with rich, beautiful details, and cleanly render them in real time at high fidelity on current-generation hardware.
“With this release, you can procedurally generate dense, lush foliage and other content at massive scale; author complex layered and blended materials with true physical accuracy; and use a magnitude more lights than ever before to illuminate your worlds with complete artistic freedom.
“You’ll also experience more powerful and intuitive animation and rigging workflows; deeper and more flexible MetaHuman integrations; and expanded virtual production possibilities – all while getting expert guidance along the way from the new in-Editor AI Assistant.”
Highlights in the 5.7 release, provided by Epic, include:
- Scalable high-fidelity rendering now available with Nanite Foliage: This experimental new geometry rendering system enables teams to create and animate dense, high-detail, foliage-heavy environments for large open worlds that efficiently render on current-gen hardware.
- Substrate, Unreal Engine’s state-of-the-art modular material authoring and rendering framework. Substrate lets creators combine multiple material behaviours – such as those found in metal, clear coat, skin and cloth – with true high-quality physical accuracy, for effects such as realistic multi-layered car paint, oiled leather, or blood and sweat on skin.
- Extended MetaHuman integration, including support for the MetaHuman Creator Unreal Engine plugin now on both Linux and macOS.
- An enhanced in-Editor animation toolset adds features like refactored Animation Mode, improvements to the IK Retargeter and Skeletal Editor, and the addition of a new Dependency View for better visualisation.
- Enhancements for virtual production workflows include a new Live Link Broadcast Component, which enables Unreal Engine itself to act as a source of animation data across your network, as well as a new and improved version of Composure, Unreal Engine’s built-in real-time compositing tool.
This release also introduces a new AI Assistant, offering “helpful guidance on Unreal Engine directly in the Editor”.
A dedicated slide-out panel enables you to ask questions, generate C++ code, or follow step-by-step guidance, all without leaving the Editor.
