What is Unreal Engine?

Unreal Engine is a 3D game engine developed by Epic Games, developers of Fortnite. It's one of the most established and well regarded game creation and 3D visualization tools.

Unreal Engine has been used to create many popular games like PUBG, the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Street Fighter 5, Borderlands 3, Gears 5, Batman: Arkham City, and Valorant. Below is a tech demo of the upcoming The Witcher 4, running on UE:

How much storage do you need for Unreal Engine?

Unreal Engine 5 typically requires around 30 – 40 GB for a minimal installation, but a full setup with optional components can exceed 100 GB. During installation, you may need up to 120 – 130 GB of free space due to temporary files. For ongoing use, it's recommended to have at least 256 GB of free space, especially for large projects.

What are other Unreal Engine 5 system requirements?

Unreal Engine 5.x requires a 64-bit Windows 10 or later operating system, a quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 8 GB or more of RAM (16 GB+ recommended), and a DirectX 12-compatible GPU such as an NVIDIA GTX 1080 or AMD RX Vega 64 or better. SSD storage is strongly recommended for faster load times and better performance.

Does it cost to use Unreal Engine 5?

Unreal Engine 5 is free to download and use for individuals, small businesses, and educational institutions. Game developers owe a 5% royalty on gross revenue exceeding $1 million per product, though revenue from the Epic Games Store is exempt. Starting January 1, 2025, this royalty rate drops to 3.5% if the game launches on the Epic Games Store before or simultaneously with other platforms.

Which is easier to use, Unity or Unreal Engine?

Unity is generally considered easier to use for beginners, especially those new to game development or coding. Its interface is more streamlined, and it uses C#, a programming language that many find more accessible than Unreal's C++.

Unreal Engine is more powerful out of the box for high-end graphics and realistic rendering, but it has a steeper learning curve. However, its Blueprint visual scripting system helps non-programmers create complex logic without writing code, which can ease the experience for some users.

Why is packaging my UE project taking forever or failing?

Long packaging times or failures are often related to large content files, missing dependencies, or plugins not being correctly set up for your target platform. Clean your project, remove unused assets, and make sure only necessary plugins are enabled. Always check the Output Log for specific errors.

Why is my UE5 project running so slow in the editor?

Performance issues in UE5 are often due to Lumen and Nanite being enabled by default. If you're on lower-end hardware or working on a large scene, try disabling Lumen or switching to the "Unlit" view mode, and ensure Virtual Shadow Maps are off. Also, reduce scalability settings and enable "Use Less CPU when in Background."

Features

FBX, USD, and Alembic support

Connect to media production pipelines, with support for industry standards like FBX, USD, and Alembic. First-class USD support enables users to collaborate better with team members and work in parallel. Unreal Engine can read a USD file from anywhere on disk without a time-consuming full import, and write back changes to it as overrides; reloading the USD payload instantly updates changes made by other users upstream.

Python scripting

Integrate Unreal Engine into your pipeline and automate your workflows with full support for the industry standard Python scripting in the Unreal Editor. You can construct asset management pipelines, automate data preparation workflows, procedurally lay out content in a level, and create custom UIs to control the Unreal Editor.

Datasmith: seamless data conversion

Convert entire scenes – including animation and metadata – from 3ds Max, Revit, SketchUp Pro, Cinema 4D, Rhino, SolidWorks, Catia, and a whole host of other DCC, CAD, and BIM formats at high fidelity with Datasmith. Nondestructive re-importing means you can continue to iterate in your source package without losing downstream changes. Access to metadata opens doors to automated data preparation through Python scripting or Visual Dataprep.

Visual Dataprep

Easily automate data preparation workflows – even if you're not a programmer – with a simplified visual tool that lets you create a "recipe" of filters and operators that you can save and reuse on other scenes or projects. Make LODs, set up Lightmap UVs, substitute materials, and delete or merge objects based on factors such as class, name, metadata tags, or size.

LiDAR point cloud support

Aggregate and use huge datasets captured from the real world, with the ability to import, visualize, edit, and interact with point clouds acquired from laser scanning devices directly within Unreal Engine. Point clouds can be used to visualize locations and to give accurate context to newly designed elements.

The Unreal Editor

Unreal Engine includes the Unreal Editor, an integrated development environment available on Linux, macOS, and Windows for content authoring and game level development. With support for Multi-User Editing, artists, designers, and developers can simultaneously make changes to the same Unreal Engine project in a safe and reliable way, while the ability to run the full Unreal Editor in VR mode means you can build in a WYSIWYG environment.

Landscape and terrain tools

Create massive-scale open world environments and terrains with mountains, valleys, and even caves, with the Landscape system. Add multiple height map and paint layers, and sculpt and paint them independently of each other. Users can also nondestructively edit their landscape with a layer reserved for splines, and create unique custom brushes in Blueprint, and use them to adapt landscapes based on other elements.

Scalable foliage

Automatically cover your huge outdoor environments with different types of grass, flowers, small rocks, or your mesh of choice using the Grass Tool, and create vast forests filled with many different kinds of trees and bushes with the Procedural Foliage Tool that simulates how a forest grows over the years.

Sky, cloud, and environment lighting

Author and render realistic or stylized skies, clouds, and other atmospheric effects with full artistic freedom, with a Volumetric Cloud component that can interact with Sky Atmosphere, Sky Light, and up to two directional lights. Components can be lit and shadowed dynamically, in line with time-of-day updates in real time.

Water system

Create believable bodies of water within your landscapes with a Water system that gives you the ability to define oceans, lakes, rivers, and islands using splines. Built-in fluid simulation enables characters and objects to realistically interact with the water; the fluid also responds to Terrain, such as reflecting ripples off the shore, and reacting to river flow maps.

Robust multiplayer support

For over two decades, Unreal Engine's multiplayer framework has been battle-tested across many platforms and game types to produce some of the industry's most compelling multiplayer experiences. Unreal Engine ships with a scalable and proven client/server architecture out of the box to bring instant viability to any project's multiplayer component.

Advanced artificial intelligence (AI)

Give AI-controlled characters increased spatial awareness of the world around them and enable them to make smarter movements with Unreal Engine's gameplay framework and artificial intelligence system, controlled through either Blueprints or Behavior Trees. Dynamic navigation mesh updates in real time as you move objects for optimal pathing at all times, while Smart Objects enable you to create meaningful gameplay interactions.

Multi-platform development

With Unreal Engine, you can deliver content on a comprehensive range of desktop, console, and mobile platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux PCs; PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch; and iOS and Android mobile devices.

XR (AR, VR, and MR) support

Unreal Engine provides the highest-quality solution for creating augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) experiences thanks to native integration with the most popular platforms including Oculus VR, SteamVR, HoloLens 2, PlayStation VR2, ARKit, and ARCore. And with support for OpenXR, you can future-proof your applications for new devices.

What's New

The release of Unreal Engine 5.8 brings further improvements to the UE5 toolset. This release delivers improvements in a wide variety of areas, including Rendering, Character and Animation, Worldbuilding, PCG, and more.

Rendering

Megalights

Megalights is now entering Production Ready status with Unreal Engine 5.8. We greatly reduced noise to maximize visual fidelity, while also improving overall performance to achieve 60fps. We also introduced new tooling to help debug and optimize your scenes.

Features Support

  • Transmission support (subsurface scattering)
  • New Froxel-based translucency support
  • High quality front layer translucency lighting
  • IES support for volumetrics and translucency
  • Lighting channels support
  • Cloud shadows
  • First-person perspective weapon support

Visualization Views

  • Light finder tool (debugging and optimization)
  • Ray visualizer tool (ray iteration count)
  • Shadow caster and shadow caster mismatch view

Lumen Lite (Beta)

Lumen Lite is a new medium-quality setting for Global Illumination using Irradiance Fields with Probe Occlusion supported by Lumen. It's twice as fast as Lumen high quality - which targets 60fps on PlayStation 5, while maintaining the art direction for games that rely on Global Illumination. This path is the new default for current-generation handheld consoles, where it can be used at 60fps, and it is supported on PC as well.

X-Rite AXF Materials as Substrate

We're adding support for importing measured materials from X-Rite's AxF format into Unreal Engine, using the Substrate material system.

This feature gives automotive and industrial visualization teams a way to bring high-fidelity, real-world scanned materials – exported from X-Rite Pantora – directly into Unreal Engine.

FSSS - Fog Screen Space Scattering (Experimental)

With Unreal Engine 5.8, we introduce an experimental Fog Screen Space Scattering (FSSS) feature on the Exponential Height Fog component that approximates multiple light scattering within participating media – making dense fog, smoke, and dust appear blurrier and more integrated with the scene by simulating how light scatters through volumetric effects.

It supports all Volumetric Fog and Local Fog Volumes, with configurable controls for scene color integration and scattering spread, though Volumetric Clouds and Heterogeneous Volumes are not yet supported. As an experimental feature it currently offers only a single blur quality level and may exhibit visual artifacts.

Substrate NPR Shading (Experimental)

With Unreal Engine 5.8, we introduce experimental Substrate Toon Shading, a stylized non-photorealistic rendering solution built on the Substrate Blendable GBuffer (legacy) mode. It supports all light types including local lights, sky lights, and Lumen global illumination, and exposes precise control over diffuse and specular response through a new Substrate Toon BSDF and Toon Profile asset.

Substrate NPR shading features include ramp-based diffuse and specular control with dithering, self-shadowing extinction with hatching patterns, anisotropic specular highlights, and global illumination scale controls.

Character and Animation

Modular Control Rig Improvements

In Unreal Engine 5.8, we've focused on improving stability and day-to-day usability of Modular Control Rig. These updates address long-standing friction in hierarchy management, module authoring, connector workflows, and mirroring behavior.

Display

  • New Show Empty Sockets Only viewport option that simplifies dragging and dropping modules and helps enable building sockets on top of modules.

Hierarchy and State Persistence

  • Improved reliability and consistency of the rig and module hierarchies:
  • Rig hierarchy and module hierarchy now reliably retain state after compilation.
  • Fixed an issue where interacting with class settings in rig modules could cause the rig hierarchy to disappear.
  • Resolved an undo/redo issue that could clear the entire rig hierarchy.
  • Modular hierarchy filter settings now persist across sessions.
  • Fixed an issue where selected controls could remain stuck after compiling dependent modules.
  • Schematic Viewport visibility now persists across editor sessions.
  • Module rig class fields now display both asset name and full asset path.
  • Shift-click and MMB-click now expand or collapse children in the module hierarchy.
  • Module hierarchy tree is now more compact and readable.
  • Module hierarchy search now includes module class when that column is visible.
  • Added options to show or hide the Connector and Module Class columns.
  • Added hotkeys to show/hide optional, secondary, and unresolved connectors in the module hierarchy.
  • Module Authoring and Creation Workflow
  • Streamlined common authoring tasks and improved discoverability:
  • Modules can now be duplicated using a right-click in the module hierarchy.
  • Added a hotkey for duplicating modules.
  • Dragging and dropping modules now automatically enables schematic view.
  • Added Control Rig Module to the Create Control Rig Asset menu.
  • Added a hotkey for creating new sockets.

Connector System Improvements

  • Significant quality-of-life and rule-handling improvements for connectors:
  • Shape Types are now selectable from a dropdown in the Modular Rig editor.
  • Connector descriptions defined in a control rig module now appear as tooltips.
  • Array connector reorder handles are now visible by default.
  • Non-draggable connectors display a plug icon and show connections via tooltip.
  • Enabled drag-and-drop of connectors directly from the Details panel.
  • Added support for showing/hiding connector and module class in the hierarchy.
  • Delete all now correctly clears array entries in the Details panel.
  • Fixed inability to remove all connections from array connectors.
  • Fixed non-array connectors incorrectly appearing as arrays in Details.
  • Added min/max rule support for connector arrays.
  • Added Set Default Match support for connector arrays (supports single connectors and wildcard arrays).
  • Enabled adding default targets to empty array connectors.
  • Prevented full hierarchy and Details panel refresh when editing array connectors.
  • Improved connector resolution when duplicating modules with child modules.
  • Connector selection now correctly respects connector rules in module details.
  • Fixed a rare crash when editing connector rules in control rig modules.

Mirroring Improvements

  • Modular rigs now retain mirror input settings.
  • Mirror modules now correctly mirror sub-hierarchies and multi-selection.

Skeletal Editor Blendshape Rigging Tools

Rigging and Blendshape Tools

  • Expanded face rigging and morph target editing tools in Unreal Engine 5.8 extend the Skeletal Editor and Control Rig to better support sculpt-driven facial workflows. These improvements strengthen in-engine blendshape authoring for stylized characters, custom skeletal meshes, and MetaHumans.
  • Joint locking support during skinning workflows.
  • Mesh element selection and editing for morph targets, with soft selection support.
  • Hotkey to mirror (symmetrize) morph targets.
  • Menu option to flip morph targets.
  • New tool to split a morph target into two using a vertex map.
  • Lattice deformer for morph target editing.
  • Post-process geometry script for LOD generation (enabling simplified subdivision-style workflows).
  • More consistent Move Brush behavior.
  • Surface-based brush falloff.

We made quality-of-life improvements across Skeletal Editor tools to improve stability, usability, and production workflows.

Selection

  • Maintain vertex/component selection when exiting Isolate Selected.
  • Ctrl+click on buttons switches to new selection mode.
  • Shift+click buttons to modify existing selections.
  • Select bones directly from the Weights Component editor.
  • Integration with the new unified gizmo system for asset editors.

Skinning and Weight Editing

  • Fixed issue where adding weights to bones did not properly update the skeleton tree.
  • Updated weight paint ramp widgets.
  • Significant weighting tool improvements aligned with blendshape workflow development.
  • New skin weight locking functionality.
  • Adjust weights between two influences without affecting others.

Bone Editing

  • Mirror strings now work anywhere in the bone name.
  • Support for mirroring joints across hierarchies.

Fixed bone renaming issues.

  • Fixed skeleton tree child selection visibility when collapsing hierarchies.
  • Axis dropdown no longer incorrectly allows None.
  • Added Local Rotation Axis (LRA) debug display.
  • Added Orient Selected Bones Only option.
  • Added Paste Special options for transferring joints between assets.
  • Moved the Mesh and Bones menu to the top viewport toolbar.

Mesh and Morph Editing

  • Added basic mesh element editing for base meshes and morph targets.
  • Currently supports moving selected elements.
  • Foundation for expanded editing capabilities.

Bone Count Reduction Tool

  • New option to remove unused bones from skeletal meshes.
  • Removes bones not referenced by skin weights.
  • Preserves parent hierarchy to root.

Animate with Control Rig Physics (Beta)

Control Rig Physics moves to Beta, this release introduces new force-based functionality and expanded tooling to enable more physics-driven animation workflows.

Physics rigs now behave as layered rigs, compositing naturally on top of existing animation without requiring an explicit layered rig setup.

These updates enhance both rig authoring and animator-facing usability, particularly within Modular Control Rig.

What's New:

  • Support for applying forces directly within Control Rig Physics.
  • Ability to animate forces over time for dynamic rig behavior.
  • Runtime performance improvements.
  • Improvements to the way "alpha" works to blend between simulation and pass-through.
  • New physics modules for Modular Control Rig to simplify physics setup.
  • New physics utility rigs in the animator kit to assist animators working with physics-driven rigs.

These improvements expand the creative range of physics-based rigging.