Unreal Engine 5.6 is out – here's what impressed me

Unreal Engine 5.6 has landed, and this isn’t just another dot release, it feels like big step forward. Beginning with a deep dive into The Witcher 4, which showcased the top features, it's clear this update release is setting the scene for new ways to work. If you’re building vast, gorgeous open worlds, animating MetaHumans with finesse, or just want to spend less time on back-and-forth workflow headaches, this update is your update.

Here at Unreal Fest Orlando, and after much speculation of what Unreal Engine 5.6 could be, it came out, and people here are impressed and eager to test out the new features and upgrades. It’s clear Epic’s latest push is all about working faster, building smarter and creating bigger.

While to an extent Unreal Engine 5.6 is less about big flashy reveals and more about levelling up your workflow, there are some sea-change tools and upgrades here that will change how games (and films, animation, and more) are made. (For context, read our guide to the best game development software.)

Every corner of the engine, whether its performance, animation, character creation, procedural tools, and UX, has been refined with this release. It’s a quality-of-life update with enough experimental magic under the hood to future-proof your project. Below I pick the seven new features that impress and explain what it means for you.

01. Unreal Engine at 60fps

Epic Games has been promising silky smooth performance for a while now, but UE 5.6 delivers. You can build large-scale, high-fidelity worlds running at a locked 60fps on current-gen consoles and high-end PCs. The big win here is smarter content streaming and serious upgrades to Lumen’s Hardware Ray Tracing (HWRT). You can now pile on the detail without choking the CPU.

A new experimental Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin takes things even further; load massive static geometry at runtime, quickly and without the dreaded framerate tank. It’s a huge deal if you’re building persistent open worlds or detailed environments, as I saw in The Witcher 4's tech demo. Plus, Epic Games’ refreshed device profiles mean it’s easier to hit 60 fps out of the box, no endless tweaking required.

02. Animation just got a whole lot smoother

Here’s where it gets really interesting: animation tools in UE 5.6 have seen their biggest overhaul yet. You can now work visually inside the engine like never before. Motion Trails are back, and they’re brilliant. Whether you’re adjusting character arcs or tweaking complex motion, you get granular control right in the viewport. Styles like Heat / Speed mode and handy tools like pinning and offsets make animation feel fluid and intuitive.

The revamped Tween Tools are a delight, especially with new hotkeys, overshoot toggles, and the Time Offset slider. They give you the kind of fine-tuned control you used to need a Digital Content Creator round-trip for – and it’s all in-editor.

Even Sequencer has had some love, with better navigation, audio scrubbing, and localisation-aware scaling. And for those of you doing rigging in-engine, you can sculpt morph targets directly within the Skeletal Mesh Editor and experiment with procedural rig physics. Yep, ragdolling is now baked right into Control Rig.

Back at the keynote I got to see how much of this is being implemented in The Witcher 4 as well as how UE 5.6 is being used to animate upcoming Predator Killer of Killers movie from The Third Floor, and it's impressive.

03. MetaHumans meet next-gen workflows

This is the one that made me sit up. MetaHuman Creator is now fully embedded in Unreal Engine with UE 5.6, and it’s packed with upgrades. You can now create almost any body type you can imagine, generate full outfits that scale to fit, and access a massively expanded library of real-world scan data.

MetaHuman Animator now works in real-time from a basic webcam or even a smartphone – something I see demoed live at Unreal Fest here in Orlando. You can drive high-fidelity animation with minimal hardware, and MetaHumans are now engine-agnostic, thanks to updated licensing. (See how game dev River End Games is using MetaHuman tech.)

So, whether you’re working in Unity, Blender, or Houdini, MetaHumans are yours to use. There’s also deeper integration with Fab and plugins to round it all out.

04. UX that actually works with you

When you’re deep in the dev trenches, good UX saves your sanity. Unreal Engine 5.6 brings a slicker, cleaner interface that keeps things flowing. The redesigned Content Browser is smarter, with better asset previews and orientation handling. Viewport toolbars are now dynamic, putting key tools at your fingertips without bloating the screen.

It’s not flashy, but these quality-of-life updates add up to a much more streamlined experience, especially if you’re hopping between Asset Editors and modes.

05. Dev tools that cut down iteration time

This release isn’t just about flashy features, it’s also about giving time back to devs. A revamped Project Launcher (still in Beta) simplifies how you manage builds and device profiles.

Zen Streaming (also in Beta) means you can skip packaging and install loops, which makes testing on hardware a breeze. There’s even Incremental Cook (Experimental) to cook only what’s changed, because no one enjoys waiting on full builds when only one asset was touched or tweaked.

06. Procedural world-building gets turbocharged

UE5.6 continues to push procedural generation forward. The PCG framework now supports GPU-based spawning, multithreading, and a shiny new 3D viewport so you can preview elements directly. And with Node Graph UX improvements and customisable templates, creating massive environments feels snappy and flexible.

Biome creation got a massive upgrade, too. With the new PCG Biome Core v2 plugin, you can blend and layer biomes more naturally. It’s all about giving you more control to make worlds that feel organic. And everything is done faster.

07. Cinematics and mocap just levelled up

This one’s for the filmmakers using Unreal Engine and performance capture pros. UE 5.6 introduces Mocap Manager, an experimental end-to-end tool to record and manage performance capture directly in the editor. It’s integrated with Live Link Hub and pairs seamlessly with MetaHumans, whether you’re using mobile cameras or pro-grade rigs.

On the cinematic side, there’s a brand-new Cinematic Assembly Toolset (CAT), which brings templated workflows, naming tokens, and compatibility with Take Recorder and Movie Render Queue. Oh, and if you’re just trying to render a quick shot, the new Quick Render (Beta) feature gets it done with one click, straight from the viewport.

Download Unreal, 5.6 from the Epic Games website. Visit the Unreal Engine 5.6 blog for deeper dives and video.