The latest version of Unreal Engine is a full-fledged content creation toolkit, not just for games, and it’s still free.
The Unreal Engine has come an incredibly long way since it debuted as the graphics engine powering Epic Games’ (then still known as Epic Megagames) first FPS title. Way back in 1997, Unreal wowed PC gamers with reflective surfaces, impressive lighting effects, and immersive skeletal animations. The engine was licensed for numerous games, and in short order, licensing became the primary purpose of further engine development. Unreal Engine has come so far, in fact, that it dropped the “the” from its name. Jokes aside, Unreal Engine today is a full-featured content-authoring toolkit, primed and ready for use by architects, engineers, designers, artists, filmmakers, and anyone else with an idea—not just game developers. Epic has been teasing folks with the new features in the 5th full-number revision of its SDK for awhile now. Around this time in 2020, Epic released “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” a video showcasing the ” Valley of the Ancients ” demo for Unreal Engine 5. More recently, “The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience” hit current-generation game consoles and wowed us all with shockingly photo-realistic visuals Well, Unreal Engine 5 is finally here for anyone to download and play with.
