ArticlesUnreal Fest 2025: What Stood Out the Most

Starting with: The Next The Witcher Demo
The event kicked off with a tech demo of the next The Witcher, used as a showcase to demonstrate what Unreal Engine 5.6 is already capable of. The demo was running in real time and highlighted several key technical improvements—not only in visuals, but also in features that directly support the development of more complex and stable games.

More Reliable Lighting with Lumen
The main leap forward was in Lumen, which now behaves much better in enclosed environments (an old issue that caused flickers and required many manual tweaks). On top of that, day-to-night transitions are now smoother and noticeably more stable in real time.

Lighter and More Functional Cloth Simulation
Another big step was in cloth simulation. Fabric interactions are now lighter and more functional, with new possibilities for modularity and runtime control. For those working on presentations or needing quick iteration, this is a real time-saver.

Cleaner Camera Transitions
It might sound like a small thing, but transitions between gameplay cameras and cinematic scenes are now much easier to set up—and far less headache-inducing. Epic created a new toolset within Sequencer to help avoid glitches and harsh cuts, something that used to demand extra polish.

Muscle Simulation
One of the most impressive additions was the new muscle simulation system, now built directly into Unreal. Until now, this was something mostly seen in film pipelines (like Maya or Houdini) and is only just starting to arrive in real-time games.
It’s not a literal simulation of real muscles—the process involves creating a muscle model, training AI to understand deformations and how they affect the skin, and applying that behavior to animations. The result is convincing and, more importantly, viable within the engine, without having to export to other tools.

More Realistic (and Lighter) Foliage
A classic challenge in game vegetation: alpha planes, low performance, mixed pipelines. Epic’s solution was to combine Nanite with a new foliage modeling system—literally modeling leaves and branches piece by piece.
Beyond the impressive visuals, the new system allows vegetation to interact more realistically with light and cast true shadows in the scene. This changes the way we think about and build forest or dense environment scenes. The voxel-based LOD also helps maintain performance despite the high level of detail.

A New Animation Framework
Unreal’s animation system went through a complete overhaul—from CPU to GPU—covering threading and task distribution. This opens the door for far greater scale, both in variety and performance.
With the new framework, it’s possible to run dozens (or hundreds) of animations simultaneously, mix them with simulations, and still maintain performance in crowded scenes with complex character interactions. Epic showed some heavy examples, and everything ran smoothly—great news for anyone creating lively worlds without sacrificing frame rate.

More Accessible (and Customizable) MetaHuman
The new MetaHuman version is no longer an isolated, mysterious system. Now it’s integrated directly into the engine, with expanded customization options, including body, textures, and clothing. They’ve also established a clearer pipeline for customizing and exporting, which helps those looking to sell or share assets reliably.
Facial capture is much simpler now—you can use any camera, and the system adapts directly to the MetaHuman. For Maya users, there’s a new plugin for expression control and creation. They also launched a Houdini integration to generate hair directly on the models.

RealityScan 2.0 and Fab in the Launcher
RealityScan 2.0 has greatly improved the object capture process. While it still requires time and care, the resulting 3D model’s level of detail is excellent—perfect for those chasing photorealism.
Another welcome change: Fab is now integrated into the Unreal launcher. No more leaving the engine to search for and download assets—a small tweak, but one that streamlines the workflow significantly.

UEFN and the Fortnite Ecosystem
The event also brought important updates for the Fortnite and UEFN ecosystem. Epic is adding new metrics and tools that directly affect creators building experiences on the platform—especially regarding the Creator Economy and monetization.
For teams like ours, already active in this ecosystem, these changes are worth following closely.

Bottom Line
Unreal Fest 2025 brought more than just new features. The overall impression is that Epic is working to reduce reliance on external tools in our pipeline, give developers more direct control within the engine, and open the door to richer experiences—without overcomplicating the development process.
We’re already testing these updates here, and applying them to projects whenever possible.