LogInMegaLights Beta, Nanite Foliage, Skeletal Editor updates, an AI assistant, and much more.
Ahead of Unreal Engine 5.7's highly anticipated release, expected by many to happen later this week during Unreal Fest Stockholm 2025, Epic Games has already shared the public roadmap for version 5.7, allowing us to have a sneak peek at the new features, upgrades, and enhancements coming with the next major update.
One of the highlights of UE5.7, and a feature that had been expected for quite some time now, is the long-awaited arrival of Nanite Foliage, a new rendering path for creating lifelike and animated greenery in games.
Nanite Foliage comprises three systems: Nanite Assemblies, which organize foliage instances into a single cohesive unit, Nanite Skinning, which defines how it behaves dynamically with systems like wind, and Nanite Voxels, pixel-sized voxels that preserve detail, animation, and material properties based on camera distance. According to Epic, this Experimental feature will enable realistic foliage at 60 FPS on current-gen hardware.
Another notable upgrade is MegaLights, a recently added feature that allows artists to use exponentially more lights in their 3D environments, now entering beta, introducing improvements to noise reduction and overall performance, while also adding support for Directional Light, Niagara Particle Lights, Translucency, and Hair Strands.
The software's Skeletal Editor is also being enhanced, now allowing users to create and edit morph shapes, bones, and skin weights seamlessly. In UE5.7, users will be able to instantly switch between placing bones, painting weights, and sculpting blendshapes on a Skeletal Mesh. Other improvements include a new Morph Target Viewer and the ability for shapes to adapt to changes in mesh topology.
Unreal Engine 5.7 is also set to include an Experimental AI Assistant that acts as a built-in ChatGPT of sorts, providing a faster way to get answers without leaving Unreal Engine. By opening a dedicated panel in the Editor, you can ask questions, generate code, or follow step-by-step guidance – all without switching to a browser.
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