Unreal Engine 5.6 is Out Now, MetaHuman Creator Now Integrated With the Engine

Epic Games took the stage at the Unreal 2025 event state and introduced the latest version of the unreal engine. Version upgrades may not be dramatic as Unreal Engine 5 was compared to 4, but the newer version, Unreal Engine 5.6, has quite a few new features of its own. Check out the showcase of some new features below.

Epic explains one of the key goals in the latest release of Unreal Engine, explaining that it can maintain a stable frame rate of 60 FPS in open world games focusing on high visual fidelity. According to the announcement, the engine is now able to achieve this on all modern platforms, from PCs to consoles to smartphones.

“In this release, one of our key goals was to build a massive open world that is extremely high loyal and runs smoothly at 60 fps across the current generation of hardware,” Epic Games wrote on its official website. “We have also made great strides towards true engine-first animation and rigging workflows, reducing the need for DCC round trips. Furthermore, metahumans can write directly within the engine, unleashing more streamlined and efficient creative processes.”

One feature revealed in Unreal Engine 5.6 is hardware ray tracing. This will improve performance when the game uses lumen global lighting. The latest version of the engine can eliminate the bottlenecks that can arise from the CPU when it comes to rendering large open worlds.

Unreal Engine 5.6 can utilize a fast geometry streaming plugin to improve performance from the game when static content is streamed when the game launches. For players, this primarily means there is less bottleneck to deal with the game when streaming static objects that cannot be interacted with but add to the scenery.

Animators can also enjoy some of the new features of the engine, including improvements to the Tween tool that gives animators more powerful control over selected keyframes and nodes. Some of these extensions are the new Curve Editor toolbar, which further helps animators with keyframe manipulation, in addition to adding lattice tools and smart key snaps.

With Unreal Engine 5.6, Metahuman creators are also fully integrated into the engine toolkit. Metahuman allows developers to create realistic looking human characters that can be used in other unrealistic engines while developing the game. Developers can also capture actor performances in real time on most webcams and smartphones, and animate them in real time with the engine.

For professional and aspiring developers, that may seem strange, but Unreal Engine 5.6 is now available. Check out the showcase video below for more information about new features in Unreal Engine 5.6, including demonstrations such as new hardware ray tracing. Also check how to do that The Witcher 4 Take advantage of some of these features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eox40-hztmm