Nanite
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
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 for 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 update.
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
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 is 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”.
Animation
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 biggest 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
Finally, Arjan also said Unreal will see workflow enhancements in the particle-based VFX system Niagara, which will also be integrated with PCG.
Conclusion
While there is no official news yet on Unreal Engine 5.6, the roadmap provided by Epic Games’ technical director Arjan Brussee at the Unreal Fest in Seattle in September gives us an idea of what to expect. From improvements in Nanite Foliage and Lumen to enhanced rendering and animation tools, there are many exciting changes on the horizon for Unreal Engine.
FAQs
Q: When can we expect Unreal Engine 5.6?
A: There is no official release date yet, but based on past release cycles, we expect it to arrive in the first half of 2025.
Q: What are the main features of Unreal Engine 5.6?
A: The main features include improvements in Nanite Foliage and Lumen, enhanced rendering and animation tools, and workflow enhancements in the particle-based VFX system Niagara.
Q: Will Anim Next be available in Unreal Engine 5.6?
A: It’s likely that Anim Next will not be available in Unreal Engine 5.6, but rather further down the line.
