Unreal Engine 5.5 is here.

Check out some of the highlights.

First up, let's take a look at how we're making Unreal Engine's in-editor animation authoring tools even more powerful and intuitive, so there's less need for you to roundtrip with DCC tools.

Sequencer sees a whole bunch of updates, including a more controllable interface with better filtering and easier access to properties.

We've also added non-destructive animation layers, complete with animatable weighting.

Plus, you can now author animatable animation deformers inside Control Rig and easily apply them to characters in Sequencer with a single click.

Squash and stretch, anyone?

Released last year, MetaHuman Animator enables everyone to create stunning facial animations from an actor's performance.

Now we've expanded that tool set so you can animate MetaHumans using just the audio of a performance, making it easier than ever to bring your MetaHumans to life.

Simply select the pre-recorded audio performance and hit Process to generate full face animation on your MetaHuman.

Nothing else is needed to create facial animation with accurate lip sync.

It works with a variety of languages, like French, bonjour, je m'appelle Darrel, and even non-verbal sounds.

We've also included a batch processing capability, which means you can create facial animations for multiple language localizations in just a few clicks.

We just can't wait to see what you do with this new feature.

On the animation gameplay front, we've added the mutable character customization system that generates dynamic skeletal meshes, materials, and textures at runtime, while optimizing memory usage, keeping shader costs low, and reducing the draw call count.

Choosers, which enable you to easily select animations for playback based on game context, moved to production ready in this release and now work for nearly any type of asset.

We've invested significant effort into improving rendering performance in UE5.5, especially hardware ray tracing.

Lumen can now run at 60 hertz on platforms with hardware support, while Path Tracer and Light Baking benefit too.

Now production ready, Path Tracer also adds support for Linux, as well as Sky Atmosphere,

Volumetric Clouds, and more.

Movie Render Graph receives many user requested enhancements and moves to beta.

All asset types are now fully supported.

This release also offers a sneak peek at an experimental new feature we're calling Megalights.

Megalights enables you to add hundreds of dynamic shadow casting lights to your scenes without constraints.

On console and PC, you can freely use textured area lights with soft shadows, light functions, media texture playback, and volumetric shadows.

It's already being dubbed the nanite of lights.

In this release, the in-camera VFX toolset moves to full production readiness, including support for SMPTE 2110, the Camera Calibration

Solver, and more.

The updated Virtual Scouting toolset is also now production ready, offering a powerful out-of-the-box experience using OpenXR HMDs and new opportunities for customization via an extensive API.

Meanwhile, the color grading panel now supports post-process volumes, cine cameras, and color correction regions.

It's also been made available for general use in the Unreal Editor, not just within display.

On the platform front, we've been investing in our support for mobile, with the aim of cementing Unreal Engine as the best engine for mobile and cross-platform AAA game development.

You can expect increased visual fidelity from the mobile forward renderer.

There are also several improvements to the mobile previewer, including the ability to capture and preview a specific Android device profile, and to emulate half-16 float precision shaders, making it easier to detect and deal with artifacts.

Finally, this release sees many dev iteration tools reach production readiness, including Unreal Zen Server for deployment as a shared derived data cache, Unreal Zen Loader, Unreal Build Accelerator, and Unreal Horde.

Meanwhile, an experimental new feature means that Zen Server can now stream cooked data to target platforms from console to mobile.

These are just some of the highlights of Unreal Engine 5.5.

You can find out more about all the new features and download the release on unrealengine.com.

Enjoy.