Unreal Engine 5.7 Preview is here and it opens the door to new tools and creative enhancements! From improved workflows to expanded options, this update highlights the continued evolution of UE.
The Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) is now Production-Ready and delivers significant extensibility and GPU performance improvements, offering greater ease and flexibility integrating PCG into your workflows.
Weâve continued optimizing GPU generation and game thread performance, and PCG is now almost twice as fast as it was in UE 5.5! The GPU parameter overrides enable you to set different parameter values dynamically when working with GPU nodes, and with the Scaling improvements and performance gains, the GPU Compute path in PCG is now better suited for multiplatforms, including the use of FastGeo. The new PCG-specific editor mode provides customizable tools including draw spline, and paint or create volume; in addition, PCG Graphs can now be executed as standalone graphs. Thereâs lots to explore in this update!
Even though PCG is now Production-Ready, the framework is still in ongoing development and continues to evolve with even greater stability and usability. Which brings us to the next exciting update:
The Procedural Vegetation Editor! This new Experimental plugin enables you to add assets from Fab and use them as starting points to grow, shape, and customize Nanite-ready foliage directly in the Unreal Editor. You can create and customize vegetation in real time, without having to round-trip with third-party tools and procedurally assemble them into unique tree variations and forests.
Built on a PCG-based node graph, it empowers you to sculpt trees with gravity and scaling, refine leaf and branch layouts, swap models with ease, and export as skeletal or static meshes. With the ability to generate endless variations, you can quickly build a rich library of unique vegetation for your projects. Make sure to also stay tuned for the new Quixel Megaplants assets on Fab coming with the full 5.7 release to start your workflows!
Speaking of vegetation⌠Nanite Foliage is shipping as Experimental, delivering an industry-leading rendering path built on three powerful systems that enable you to render and animate dense, high-detail foliage smoothly at 60 fps on current-gen hardware. Nanite Assemblies provide building blocks to efficiently manage asset variations, reducing storage, memory, and rendering cost, while Nanite Skinning drives dynamic motion with systems like wind. Nanite Voxel preserves incredible detail, animation, and material characteristics at any distance, all at a fraction of the cost.
MegaLights is now in Beta with support for directional lights, Niagara particle lights, translucency lighting, and hair grooms. At the same time, you can use the new performance tuning controls to manage resolution scale and update rate and get better out-of-the-box performance with improved noise reduction.
Substrate materials move into full production-readiness! Built for expressive control and long-term flexibility, Substrate replaces fixed shading models with a modular system that balances scalability and performance, offering both the Adaptive GBuffer for advanced effects like per-pixel topology and layered closures, and the Blendable GBuffer for broad platform compatibility. You can now combine multiple material layers such as metal, clear coat, skin, and clothâwith true high-quality physical accuracy.
In UE 5.6, we made MetaHuman directly accessible in the engine, and we have some new updates. The MetaHuman Creator plugin is now available for Linux and macOS, and the MetaHuman Creator Python and Blueprint API enable you to script nearly all editing and assembly operations for a MetaHuman Character asset using Python or Blueprint. We have improved body-pose-agnostic conform support, and UV-space vertex correspondence between conform template and model meshes. In the full 5.7 release, you will also be able to generate animation in real time from an external camera using Live Link Face on an iPad or Android device. You can read the in-depth announcement here.
Building upon our major updates to Animation in UE 5.6, this release continues the work and delivers new Experimental improvements that provide faster, more native functionality. Selection Sets streamline animation workflows by giving you quicker access to multiple controls within rigs, with the ability to share these sets with teams for consistency. Previously, animators would rely on custom tools such as GUI Pickers for this, but Selection Sets provide a more in-house option. Animation mode refactor improvements streamline your workflowsâtools can now be minimized into a slimmer panel, giving you more space in the direct viewport. And the updated Constraint UX window combines Space, Constraints, and the Snapper into a single interface, accessible through one icon.
Weâve also made some Experimental improvements to our Rigging tools. Blend shapes and Sculpting bring the flexibility of industry-standard sculpting workflows into Unreal Engine. An update to the Skeletal Editor tools now offers the ability to create and edit morph shapes, bones, and skin weights seamlessly. Physics World Collisions make characters interact realistically with their environments, and Dependency View enables you to see how data flows through your rigs for faster debugging and optimization.
Lastly, we know many of you are excited about the upcoming Epic Developer Assistant coming to Unreal Engine, and so are we! You may notice the UI is available for this tool during preview, however, please note: the Epic Developer Assistant will launch with the full release of 5.7.0 and will not be included in the 5.7 Preview. This new tool brings instant answers, guidance, and C++ code generation right into Unreal Engine through a dedicated in-Editor panel, helping you stay in flow without ever switching to a browser.
This is our first step in on our AI journey, and weâre thrilled for you to get your hands on this feature fully in the future!
You can always check what else is coming up next on the 5.7 Public 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 you make a copy of your projects for testing these builds, rather than converting your projects.
Known & Fixed Issues:
- Unresolved issues in 5.7 Preview targeted to be fixed by the 5.7 Release
- Unresolved issues in 5.7 Preview
- Issues fixed in 5.7 (the fix may not be included in the current available Preview)
If you discover any additional issues with this Preview release, please report them using these guidelines: How to Report a Bug.
?, infinite quality with that feature! Please deliver i next small updates. All the best!