Epic Games introduced Unreal Engine 5.6 earlier this month, and tucked inside all the shiny upgrades is MetaHuman 5.6—a toolkit that’s turning the way creators build digital characters upside down. With this release, Epic’s baked their character creation system right into Unreal Engine itself.
Plugging into Unreal Engine 5.6 is a game-changer. MetaHuman Creator, once a standalone cloud tool, now lives cozy inside the engine’s editor, letting artists whip up and tweak characters without bouncing between apps. “MetaHuman Creator is now fully embedded in Unreal Engine with UE 5.6, and it’s packed with upgrades,” Epic announced during the State of Unreal 2025 keynote.
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Body tweaking gets a huge boost with the Parametric Body System. Now you can play with everything from height to muscle bulk, and the clothes adjust on their own to match. Epic calls it a way to make “higher-fidelity, production-ready MetaHumans,” pointing out how it churns out characters primed for games or cutscenes.
Animation’s gotten a major facelift too, with MetaHuman Animator now letting you animate in real time using just a basic webcam or smartphone. “Animate MetaHumans in real time using performances captured from most webcams and a wide range of smartphones,” Epic shared. Even cooler, it can whip up animations straight from audio, picking up the emotional vibes in someone’s voice.
The licensing shake-up is stealing the show. MetaHumans aren’t tied to Unreal Engine anymore—Epic dubs this a “dramatic extension” of their reach. The new End User License Agreement lets creators toss MetaHuman characters and animations into any engine or tool—Unity, Blender, Houdini, you pick. This open-door policy opens it up to more folks, letting a wider crowd tap into Epic’s super-realistic tech. “These powerful creator tools are now available to all,” Epic emphasized, hinting at a push for a more inclusive creative scene.
Artists can now sculpt morph targets right in the editor, speeding up tweaks to facial expressions or body shapes. Tying into Epic’s Fab Marketplace adds a fun twist, with a dedicated MetaHuman section where people can swap custom models, clothes, and hair. This marketplace, paired with new plugins, builds a lively hub where creators can bounce ideas off each other, cranking up production without cutting corners on quality.
Unreal Engine 5.6’s bigger upgrades, like beefed-up hardware ray tracing and snappier geometry streaming, make sure MetaHuman characters pop in huge open worlds at 60 FPS. The ML Deformer, teased in CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 4 tech demo, cuts down the grunt work for tricky stuff like muscle flexing, making top-notch characters doable on today’s gear. Epic’s release notes hit the nail on the head: “These low-level optimizations ensure faster, more efficient rendering, bringing high-end visual fidelity and scalability.”
