Key Takeaways
- Unreal Engine 5.3 is now available for public download, offering improved features and experimental additions for game developers and filmmakers.
- Notable features like Nanite and Lumen have been refined in this update, providing faster performance and expanded capabilities.
- Filmmakers can benefit from new additions like Cine Cam Rig Rail Actor and enhanced VCam features, improving camera movement and reviewing takes.
Epic Games has announced that Unreal Engine 5.3 is finally available to download by the public. Epic Games has been hard at work in perfecting its renowned game engine and real-time 3D creation tool, pushing update after update that continue to expand the engine’s capabilities and functionality.
First shipped in April 2022, Unreal Engine 5 has been building quite the hype among game developers and filmmakers. In just under two years, there’s already a long list of games being developed with Unreal Engine 5, including hotly anticipated titles such as Tekken 8 and Black Myth: Wukong. A few Unreal Engine 5 games have also been released in 2023, with Immortals of Aveum being one of the most notable examples.
In its latest iteration, Unreal Engine 5 brings many improvements to readily available features as well as new, experimental features. Nanite and Lumen, two of the most notable features of Unreal Engine 5, are being refined even further in the 5.3 update. According to Epic Games, Nanite now delivers faster performance for masked materials, including foliage, and can represent a greater range of surfaces. On the other hand, Lumen with the help of Hardware Ray Tracing now has expanded capabilities, such as multiple reflection bounces and better performance on consoles.
Beyond the updated core toolsets, Unreal Engine 5.3 also introduces various experimental features that Epic is expecting to further develop in future releases. These include Sparse Volume Textures (SVT) and Path Tracing of Heterogenous Volumes for cinematic-quality volumetric rendering, as well as Orthographic Rendering that is useful for providing a stylistic camera perspective. Developers can also make use of a new Skeletal Editor for better animation in Unreal Engine 5, not to mention an improved cloth simulation feature.
For filmmakers that are planning to include Unreal Engine in their workflow, this new update has some cool additions such as Cine Cam Rig Rail Actor and enhancements to the VCam feature. The former allows emulation of the workflow and results of traditional camera movement along tracks or on dollies, while the latter enables faster iteration through the use of iPad in reviewing takes. Unreal Engine 5.3 also lets filmmaker capture fast-moving action more easily by recording at a slower frame rate.
Given that Unreal Engine 5.3 has just been released, it might take some time before players can see games utilizing some of the highlighted features. Regardless, the latest version of Unreal Engine 5 is now ready to be put to work via the Epic Games Launcher.
