Next to Unity, the Unreal Engine is the top dog among game engines. Now, Epic Games has updated its current Unreal Engine 5 to version 5.5, which brings numerous improvements. There are important new optimizations, especially in the areas of animation creation, mobile game development and virtual production. Most exciting, however, is a new feature called MegaLights, which Epic Games calls the "Nanite for lighting".
The Sequencer, a non-linear animation editor, has received numerous workflow improvements, including faster access to properties and a revamped filtering feature. In addition, non-destructive animation layers are now available in the Unreal Engine Sequencer with version 5.5. Another exciting new feature is the ability to create cartoon-like contact deformations and squeeze or stretch movements in the Control Rig and apply them directly in the Sequencer.
With the update to Unreal Engine 5.5, MetaHuman Animator can now automatically generate realistic facial animations from pure audio files. Version 5.5 of the Unreal Engine offers a handy tool for those who often need to adjust game objects at runtime: the Mutable Character Adjustment System. It allows you to dynamically adjust the textures and materials of models such as characters, weapons or animals.
Users will also benefit from numerous changes in the rendering area with the update to version 5.5. For example, the Lumen real-time lighting system can now run at 60 Hz if the hardware supports it. The most interesting feature of Unreal Engine 5.5, however, is MegaLights, which allows a game scene to be equipped with hundreds of dynamic lights, including shadows, with almost no limitations. Not without reason, Epic Games calls the MegaLights feature "Nanite for lighting", although this feature is still described as experimental (buy the paperback "Unreal Engine 5 Character Creation, Animation, and Cinematics" at Amazon).