Everything we expect from the next updates to Epic Games' engine.
(Image credit: Epic Games)
Unreal Engine 5.5 was released back in November providing notable improvements in rendering, the animator rig, mobile game development and VR scouting, and the introduction of MegaLights in Lumen. This is seen as the best game development software available now, but its uses are varied (it features in our best free animation software guide). Game developers and VFX artists will now be wondering what comes next, and everyone has their own list of wants for Unreal Engine 5.6.
There's no official news yet on Unreal Engine 5.6 or when it will be released. But based on past release cycles, we expect the next update at some point in the first half of 2025. And the UE roadmap provided by technical director Arjan Brussee at the Unreal Fest in Seattle in September provides some insights into what might be coming.
We might not see all of these updates in Unreal Engine 5.6 – some may come in Unreal Engine 5.7 or even further down the line. But the presentation provides an idea of where things are going, from tools for world-building to the planned game-changing unified animation pipeline Anim Next.
According to Epic Games' roadmap, Nanite Foliage may see further improvements in Unreal Engine 5.6 along with support for decals with translucency. This could improve the rendering of moving trees and provide better integration with Lumen.
Lumen
(Image credit: Epic Games)
Speaking of Lumen, Arjan said that Epic is working on a 120Hz mode and plans to allow the global lighting and reflection system to support less capable hardware, which will be good news for those that don't have the most powerful PC to work on. It also plans updates to the MegaLights system introduced in the last release.
Rendering
We always expect to see general rendering improvements, and Epic has said that it's working on improving the rendering of player meshes for first-person games with improved support for self-shadowing and reflections. It plans a separate FOV for first-person mode. We can also expect iterative improvements to reduce shader permutations.
World Creation
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(Image credit: Epic Games)
(Image credit: Epic Games)
(Image credit: Epic Games)
Enhancements in world creation tools may include World Partition Bookmarks to make navigating big open worlds easier and more practical. While this may be further down the line, Epic says it's also working on what it calls Megaworlds biomes, a new system of assets with built-in rules for procedural content generation with improve attribute support, versioning and dependency tracking, and on a new terrain system that will provide "Nanite-level detail".
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Animation
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(Image credit: Epic Games)
(Image credit: Epic Games)
(Image credit: Epic Games)
(Image credit: Epic Games)
(Image credit: Epic Games)
We're told that big changes are on the way for animation, although it's likely that we won't see all of these for some time. The most significant but probably also most distant change will be the launch of Anim Next, a planned unified animation pipeline that will integrate the various tools and should be faster than Animation Blueprints.
Elsewhere, the Control Rig system will see improvements in the Deformer Graph and new nodes for creating Physics Rigs and that the cinematic editor Sequencer will get a full branching dialogue system with procedural content-generation capabilities.
Epic also intends to simplify the timeline in its in-engine animation tools, to develop new versions of Tween Tools and Motion Trails and to add a physics sim that will run alongside skeletal animation. We're told that multi-character Motion Matching is also in development
Chaos Flesh in nreal Engine’s Chaos Physics will eventually be able "automate musculoskeletal simulation inside the editor itself and new machine learning features are planned, including contact generation.
Niagara
(Image credit: Epic Games)
Finally, Arjan also said Unreal will, at some point, get workflow enhancements in the particle-based VFX system Niagara, which will also be integrated with PCG.
As with all of the plans, we don't know if this will arrive in Unreal Engine 5.6 or further ahead. Looking even further ahead, for Unreal Engine 6, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has said that the team is working on improving the networking model and support for multiplayer games.
Unreal Engine 5.5 is available now and is free for all users until revenue reaches at least $1 million in a year. For the latest, follow our Unreal Engine news.
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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
