As part of today’s State of Unreal, Epic has confirmed Unreal Engine 5.6 is now available.
The company said one of the key goals of this release is to “empower you to build super-high-fidelity, large-scale open worlds that run smoothly at 60 frames per second on current-generation consoles, high-end PCs, and modern mobile devices.”
It also unveiled MetaHuman 5.6 – “our most powerful digital human toolset yet” – Unreal’s “digital human framework” that’s now out of early access and embedded in UE 5.6. The EULA has also been updated so you can use MetaHuman characters and animation in any engine or creative software. Epic said it’s taking what it learned about Fortnite’s Darth Vader AI NPC and will be “sharing the underlying technology with the creator community.” Epic Developer Assistant is also another AI tool available to help creators, albeit in beta form for now.
Epic also gave an update on the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, revealing players have spent 11.2 billion hours in 260,000 creator-made islands. The tools and IP available to creators will continue to grow, starting June 17, when creators will be able to build Lego experiences “brick-by-brick.” A partnership with Squid Game is also slated for June 27, with Avatar: The Last Airbender and Star Wars to follow.
RealityScan 2.0 is also launching in the coming weeks, unifying the desktop and mobile versions. It’ll include AI-powered masking, smarter image alignment, and support for airborne laser scans. It’s the same tech CD Projekt Red used in its The Witcher 4 Unreal Engine 5 tech demo to “capture natural objects in high fidelity.”
Finally, Epic dropped an update about Epic Games Store. It has now paid over $2.1bn to developer and publisher partners since launch, with its mobile version offering a library of “70 awesome games and 40 million installs to date.”
For all the details, head on over to the Unreal Engine website.