Unreal Engine 5.5 Preview

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Unreal Engine 5.5 Preview

MegaLights Demo Teaser | Unreal Fest Seattle 2024

MegaLights, a new experiential feature in 5.5, enables artists to use orders of magnitude more lights. They are movable and dynamic, with realistic area shadows, and can light volumetric fog. See this capture of our live, real-time demo using Quixel Megascans and KitBash3D assets.

During Unreal Fest Seattle’s opening session, we gave a live demonstration of a new Experimental feature: MegaLights, which enables you to use orders of magnitude more lights than ever before—all movable, dynamic, with realistic area shadows and the ability to light volumetric fog. In the demo, our intrepid hero Echo navigated a scene illuminated by over 1,000 shadow-casting lights in real time running on PlayStation 5. MegaLights is an Experimental feature shipping in UE 5.5.

UEFN Sizzle | Unreal Fest Seattle 2024

Check out the Opening Sizzle from this year’s Unreal Fest Seattle Opening Session. Our creators and partners are doing amazing things with Unreal Engine, here’s a look at what they’ve been up to!

Catch up on the big news from Unreal Fest Seattle 2024

The Unreal Fest Seattle keynote just wrapped, where we celebrated our developer and creator ecosystem and the amazing things you’re building with Unreal Engine and Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). Our goal is to put the same powerful tech we use to create games like Fortnite into your hands so we can all build the future of entertainment and interactive experiences together.

We also dropped some big news in the opening session: there are new Unreal Engine royalty rate savings when you ship eligible titles on the Epic Games Store on supported platforms; Unreal Engine 5.5 Preview 1 is now out and ready for you to explore; and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have burst from the sewers of NYC straight into Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN).

From design visualizations and cinematic experiences to high-quality games across PC, console, mobile, VR, and AR, Unreal Engine gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow, and stand out from the crowd.

Some features are Beta or Experimental, and should not be considered production-ready. Check the linked documentation for details.

Unreal Engine 5.5 is another milestone on our journey to help you push the boundaries of high-fidelity 3D experiences and AAA-caliber content—and Preview 1 is now available!

MegaLights enables you to use orders of magnitude more lights than ever before—all movable, dynamic, with realistic area shadows and the ability to light volumetric fog. As seen in the live demo at Unreal Fest Seattle 1.3k, our intrepid hero Echo navigated a scene illuminated by over 1,000 shadow-casting lights in real time running on PlayStation 5.

UE 5.5 also brings exciting rendering improvements: Nanite can now render Skeletal Meshes incredibly fast (currently an Experimental feature) and Path Tracer is Production-Ready.

Animation authoring tools are more robust and easier to use in 5.5, with a Production-Ready Skeletal Editor, enhanced Deformers, and the addition of much-requested features like TimeWarp curves and Animation Layers. Virtual production tools have made big steps forward with Production-Ready SMPTE 2110 integration for in-camera VFX (ICVFX), multi-camera support, and inner frustum splitting.

To support high-end games on mobile, UE 5.5 brings new features that include Mobile Preview functionality, enabling you to match device visuals and ensure players are getting the best possible experience for their device’s capabilities.

What else is coming? Check out more of the featuring coming in Unreal Engine 5.5 on the Roadmap.

Keep in mind, preview releases are not fully quality tested, are still under heavy active development, and should be considered as unstable until the final release. We recommend that developers make a copy of their projects for testing these builds, not to convert their projects.

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