Over the past months, I dedicated time to exploring the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, focusing specifically on how far I can push its render quality and real-time performance. I began this exploration because I have an upcoming project where I’m considering producing the animation directly in UE5 - and I wanted to make an informed decision about whether the engine is the right fit.

This article summarizes my hands-on experience, the tests I ran, and the insights I gained along the way.

UE5 introduced two major technologies that caught my attention:

Lumen – a dynamic global illumination system offering realistic lighting without baking.

Nanite – a virtualized geometry system capable of handling extremely high-poly meshes.

Together, they promise a level of visual fidelity that previously required heavy offline renderers. Since my upcoming project relies heavily on high-quality visuals and efficient rendering, I wanted to evaluate whether UE5 could deliver both.

To get a complete picture, I created a wide range of examples — from atmospheric cinematic shots to clean, detail-oriented product visualizations. My tests included:

I built multiple mini-sequences where I experimented with:

dynamic lighting and reflections

stylized vs. photorealistic moods

camera movements, depth of field, and motion blur

real-time vs. Movie Render Queue output

The goal was to see how close I could get to a “film-ready” look and whether UE5 could support a full animation workflow for my upcoming project.

I tested various hero objects and materials, focusing on:

metal and plastic surfaces

glass, transparency, and refractions

shadow quality

consistency between viewport preview and final render

This helped me understand how reliable UE5 is when precise material look is required.

I measured:

real-time FPS stability

render time per frame in Movie Render Queue

complexity limits (lighting, polycount, texture density)

I intentionally pushed scenes beyond typical real-time limits to see where visual quality starts to degrade.

This exploration confirmed that Unreal Engine 5 is more than just a game engine — it’s a highly capable real-time renderer suited for cinematic content, product visualization, and rapid prototyping. Based on these results, I’m seriously considering producing my upcoming animation project entirely in UE5.

If any of this resonates with you, or if you're working on a project where real-time rendering could bring value, feel free to reach out. I’m always open to collaboration, knowledge sharing, or new creative challenges.