Unreal Engine 5.7 Preview now available
Epic Games has released the Unreal Engine 5.7 Preview, giving developers early access to upcoming tools and workflow changes.
Epic Games say one of the key upgrades for UE5.7 is Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) which is now production-ready with almost double the performance compared to UE 5.5. It adds GPU parameter overrides, scaling improvements, and better multiplatform support, including FastGeo. A new PCG editor mode introduces spline drawing, volume creation, and painting, while PCG Graphs can now run standalone.
A new Procedural Vegetation Editor arrives as an experimental plugin. It allows direct creation and customization of Nanite-ready foliage inside the Unreal Editor, with options to grow and shape trees, refine leaves and branches, and export meshes without third-party tools. Nanite Foliage is also shipping as experimental, combining Assemblies, Skinning, and Voxels to render dense, detailed vegetation at playable performance.
Unreal Engine 5.7 features:
- Procedural Content Generation (PCG) – Now production-ready, nearly twice as fast as UE 5.5, adds GPU parameter overrides, standalone graphs, and a new editor mode with spline, paint, and volume tools.
- Procedural Vegetation Editor – Experimental plugin to grow, shape, and export Nanite-ready foliage directly in the editor using a node graph.
- Nanite Foliage (Experimental) – New system using Assemblies, Skinning, and Voxels to render dense, detailed vegetation at 60 fps on current hardware.
- MegaLights (Beta) – Expanded lighting with support for directional, Niagara particle, translucency, and hair lights, plus new performance tuning controls.
- Substrate Materials – Modular shading system now production-ready, supports flexible layering of materials like metal, skin, cloth, and clear coat.
- Animation / Rigging / Skeletal Editor – New features include Selection Sets, combined constraint tools, morph editing, blend shapes, sculpting, physics collisions, and improved skeletal editing.
- MetaHuman Updates – Plugin now on Linux/macOS, scripting support via Python and Blueprint, and upcoming Live Link Face for real-time camera animation.
- Epic Developer Assistant (Preview) – In-editor AI assistant for coding and guidance; UI visible now, full functionality coming with final 5.7 release.
- Performance / Tooling Enhancements – GPU and game thread optimizations, adjustable resolution scaling and update rate, and improved multiplatform GPU compute path with FastGeo.
Other changes include MegaLights moving to beta with expanded lighting support and tuning controls, and Substrate materials reaching production-ready status, enabling layered materials with higher accuracy and platform flexibility.
MetaHuman updates bring the Creator plugin to Linux and macOS, with Python and Blueprint APIs for scripting. Live Link Face support for real-time animation is planned for the final release. Animation and rigging improvements include Selection Sets, a redesigned Constraint interface, blend shapes, sculpting, and new skeletal editing features.
The preview also shows the interface for the upcoming Epic Developer Assistant, though the tool will only ship with the full 5.7 release. Be advised that users report issues with NVIDIA Smooth Motion which may cause the screen to flicker.
Source: Unreal Engine