I’ve been using Unreal Engine since 2019, and since version 4.22 if memory serves me right. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact start date as it involved a lot of testing, but I hung in there and prevailed, and today it’s one of my favourite 3D apps of all time. I couldn’t do my job without it, and it’s hard to imagine 3D life without it (along the many other DSS tools I use for my daily pipeline, like iClone/CC, Blender, Substance Painter, Premiere/Photoshop/Resolve and Topaz).
As such, and before I forget, I wanted to make a list of what I most remember about the countless versions I’ve used over the years, talk about their flaws and the improvements that came to be over time. We wouldn’t get to the latest and greatest features without the software that got us to “today”, via countless iterations and bug fixes. Old software is never remembered for the hero that it is and was, so let’s get started!
I’ll try to update this article as new versions release and I get experience with them. They always feel scary and unstable when you first use them, but looking back they often turn out better than they seem at first glance.
4.22 – 4.27
Honestly I don’t remember too much about these early versions. Aside from 4.22 being classed as the “stable one” when 4.23 had already been released, and care was advised by every tutorial I tried to follow. The one I remember most is probably the last version of this branch (4.27), which I still use it today from time to time. It crashes a lot, and drop-downs from the regular UE menus don’t open when you’re working with the editor for longer than 60 minutes. Super charming, so re-start habitually throughout the working day!
It’s an absolute marvel what devs have made with the 4.xx branch. Think Kena, Spirit of the North, and of course blockbuster titles like Borderlands, Fortnite, PUBG and Hellblade. We praise how well UE 5 works today, but let’s not forget that very handsome graphics could be produced long before its arrival, without Lumen and Nanite.
Here’s something cute I’ve made with 4.27 in 2023. This set simply didn’t work in UE 5.xx:
5.1
While 4.xx was still very much developed and frequently updated, the 5.0 Preview and Release started happening round about 2020 – and truth be told, I avoided them both. There was too much new stuff happening too fast, things were buggy, and I was still learning the basics of UE until 2022. I dipped my toe into the heady heights of the new version only with 5.1, and I haven’t regretted waiting until all the tools were more polished.
New features in the 5.xx branch were Lumen (real-time lighting) and Nanite (an automatic LOD system), although the latter took several versions to be compatible with all mesh types like skeletal meshes, landscapes and foliage. They also introduced one file per actor and World Partitioning, although neither are beneficial to what I’m doing with cinematics. I have the fondest memories of 5.1 because it’s the one I’ve spent considerable time in and it’s also the version we first used on HOM.
I remember that by comparison to later versions, 5.1 was a tad sluggish, crashed often and was complicated, still struggling between legacy UE4 features caught in the middle of a new interface, and many advanced features had not quite caught up. It introduced Media Plate actors, which were important for our project (i.e. transparent image sequences). Those were a scary nightmare to setup with legacy tools. Cinematic rendering features were introduced, but weren’t ready for prime time yet.
5.2
I very nearly skipped this version, had it not been for Sir Wade and his EPIC Animation Fellowship course. I’m still gutted that EPIC never made it public and only had it available during the live sessions. The small part of the course I did manage to watch introduced me to several key sequencer features that had been there in earlier versions, but tutorials seemingly weren’t covering them. 5.2 wasn’t a big release, more like a “catching up on a few QOL” aspects and introducing more efficiency and snappiness under the hood.
The thing I most associate with it is the option to scroll the mouse for changing how fast we can move through the viewport. This is vital for large and small sets alike, and this feature alone was worth the update.
5.3
This version came with quite a few good enhancements, and it was also the last one that was compatible with EPIC’s “unlimited use for non-gaming” license. After 5.3, commercial users who do not pay a game sales royalty must obtain a license based on revenue and/or head count of the company, so film makers and automotive designers may have chosen to stick with this version for longer.
Features I remember here are production ready virtual shadow maps (although I still find them a tad buggy to this day), the introduction of Substrate materials as a very early experimental thing, and Nanite for foliage/landscapes. We also saw the introduction of modelling tools in engine, better groom workflows and weight painting tools for skeletal meshes.
5.3 was also the last version that was compatible with the Daz to Unreal plugin, before Daz seemingly abandoned working on the project. Thankfully the original developer of the project (David Vodhanel) is still actively maintaining his own branch, through which we have compatibility with the latest versions of UE to this day (or until he stops working on it). I stayed on 5.3 for the longest time and it’s one of my most favourite UE versions.
5.4
There was not much that attracted me to UE 5.4, aside from a very early version of EPIC’s new pattern based cloth features. Much like in Marvelous Designer, we can bring in a static mesh, weight paint it and turn it into real time cloth physics. Technically introduced in 5.3, the 5.4 update saw the addition of a node graph with basic setup in place, which we had to sort of “make out of thin air” beforehand. It’s still incredibly buggy at this point, but integrates fully with Marvelous Designer cloth parameters. We even got a free one-year license and UEFN integration for this tool too.
Other than that, I remember 5.4 came with a more prominent sequencer playhead (more bright red and noticeable), the beginnings of Animation Mode and a few rendering improvements. It was also the first version that supported Motion Matching and the Game Animation Sample Project, as well as a new Motion Graphics plugin.
5.5
The last version to feature the original viewport layout, 5.5 was a big update. I began to think that odd releases are much beefier than even ones, judging by 5.4 and 5.2 previously, but that may have been a coincidence. The big new feature was Mega Lights in Experimental, something that means more fakery for light sources to improve performance.
The big thing for me were the sequencer improvements. We finally got options to isolate and hide tracks, which was such a welcome change for my pipeline. We also got animation layers, the beginnings of cage deformers and Nanite for Skeletal Meshes, although when enabled their morph targets weren’t working so it was of limited use at the time. Metahumans also got an upgrade with yet another version, and the Pathtracer finally became production ready. We also got that new Day Sequence plugin that debuted in UEFN, and a new version of GASP with more stuff to (not) understand.
One downside I remember was how transparency was handled, requiring a small tweak and a custom material for our Media Plate actors, but overall it was an improvement as we now get better/easier alpha rendering in Movie Render Queue.
5.5 contained a “frequently crashing” bug with sequencer that wasn’t fully resolved until the final 5.5.4 patch, which made it almost impossible for me to work for a whole month. I went as far as downgrading one of our sets just to work on animations. I also compiled my own branch to get access to that non-crashing patch a few weeks before its official release, which at the time nobody knew when that was going to happen. I know now that a custom UE version comes with overheads I don’t want to have again, so that was likely my last UE compilation adventure for a while.
This release marks the end of an era for both the old UI and the Animation Retargeter without that super awful Op Stack. Up until here, retargeting is easy, reliable and it works. Even when migrating retargeter assets to newer version projects, they often work better than setting up a figure from scratch in a later version of UE. GO figure!
If ever I need a reliable modern/legacy version, 5.5 would be my choice to go back to.
5.6
I’m not good with change and have resisted upgrading to 5.6 for what feels like the longest time. My biggest gripe was not being able to find my way around that newly designed UI for the viewport, although I when I finally made the jump, I got used to it rather quickly. I didn’t like how the new Animation Retargeter worked (or rather DIDN’T work with most of my my characters from both Daz and RL), and it took some “re-learning the basics” to catch up. Hence my initial hate for 5.6.
They also overhauled the tried and tested game templates with simpler less heavy ones, but the terrible colours they’ve used for first and third person templates (horror bright green and retina burn orange) left a lot to be desired. Change for the sake of change is the name of the game!
However, there were more good features than bad ones in this release, and one of the biggest ones was indeed the overall rendering quality. We now get less noise and cleaner shadows, especially with softer lights, and during cinematic rendering, projects crash less and render more reliably across all my systems. They also improved how audio scrubbing works, and it now sounds much better than before.
The biggest change was probably for Metahuman users, who got in-engine creation tools that meant no more 30min wait times to connect to a cloud-based instance of Metahuman Creator, as well as the beginnings of face and body shaping sliders plus sculpting tools. There were also some audio to Metahuman improvements, but I wasn’t across many of those as they’re not something I care too much about.
One thing I do know is that the Metahuman topology has been changed with 5.6 and is no longer compatible with what came out of the cloud-based tool. There was still a noticeable absence of tools that would let us import arbitrary humanoid shapes into Metahumans, but that was on the cards for the next release.
5.7 and beyond
At the time of writing, 5.7 is the stable version and 5.8 is in preview. I’ve used 5.7 for a couple of personal projects and find it a tad more sluggish in the editor, although I’ve been told it’s all “more performant”. Can’t say that’s true for me and my hardware, or perhaps it’s the sets I was using. The biggest thing is probably the option to import humanoid meshes to a Metahuman, but it’s an approximation at best (like with Faceform Wrap).
There are improvements overall of course, like Megalights going beta, Substrate becoming production ready, but nothing that would make me want to risk upgrading production projects. The retargeter changes yet again, requiring further changes for character imports, but apparently it’s “all for the better in the long run”. Oh, and an emphasis on PCG improvements and Mega Plans (at the expense of the FAB bridge getting worse by the minute). So yeah, mixed feelings here.
5.8 seems like a much more exciting release to me, with plenty of sequencer improvements coming (like a simplified timeline option, Direct Mesh Controls with which we can rig any part of a skeletal mesh, and controllable physics in sequencer), a new Mesh Terrain system to replace the legacy landscape system and that Lumen Radiance Cache to make real-time lighting more performant.
I’ll tell you more as time goes on, and as I gain some experience with these new tools. What are you favourite memories of earlier Unreal Engine versions? Let me know below in the comments.