Unreal Engine 5 Lessons Begin: What’s New in Unreal Engine 5

Ufuk ŞEN

October 26, 2026Updated: November 9, 20264 min read1

In architectural visualization, sticking to a single program is no longer enough. That is why we are starting a new lesson series with the Unreal Engine 5 new features. In this short intro video, we explain the plan for the series and what the then-new version 5.1 brought. We recorded the video in November 2022. Unreal Engine has released new versions since then. So follow the current features on the official website.

Unreal Engine 5 Lessons Begin: What’s New in Unreal Engine 5

What’s in this video?

Why shouldn’t we stick to a single render engine?
Nanite support for trees in Unreal Engine 5.1
Fixes for reflection, refraction and lighting
Navigating with game engine logic
Real-time rendering and animation speed
The first five core lessons of the series

Why Unreal Engine?

In our Sunday chats we talked about where the industry is heading. Visualization in particular is moving fast toward real-time tools. So we need to develop our own vision and add helper tools alongside it. In our view, the most powerful of these tools is Unreal Engine 5. (The video is in Turkish; this guide walks through the key steps in English.)

Unreal Engine also lets you work comfortably even in huge scenes. With an above-average computer, you get a truly smooth workflow. Remember, too, that tools like Twinmotion are built on top of this engine.

Unreal Engine 5 new features: Nanite for trees

Nanite is a geometry technology that displays very high-poly models without any loss of performance. Even if you copy a model thousands of times, the computer does not stutter. With Unreal Engine 5.1, this technology came to trees and plants too. So now, when you paint with the brush, you can spread trees across the scene with Nanite, along with rocks and soil.

Why does this matter? In other real-time programs, the frame rate drops when you paint a large area with trees. As we explain in the video, with Nanite the frame rate stays steady even over very large areas. That way you move around a big landscape comfortably.

Unreal Engine 5 new features: reflections and lighting

For example, earlier versions had clear problems with water and glass reflections. Some rough edges in Lumen also caused grainy noise, especially in rooms that light does not reach. Unreal Engine 5.1 brought serious fixes on these points. We will show these improvements with examples in later lessons.

Lumen is the system that calculates light bouncing off surfaces in real time. In other words, the moment you change the light, the whole scene adapts to the new light. In architectural interiors, this feature removes hours of waiting for renders.

Navigating with game engine logic

The most important part of using a program is knowing the basic moves. Where do I pick up an object, how do I move it, how do I copy it? How do I rotate the camera? In game engines and the render engines derived from them, these moves are always similar. You move forward with the W, A, S and D keys, just like in a game.

It is the same in Lumion, D5 and Twinmotion. So if you know one of these programs, moving to Unreal Engine is easier.

Unreal Engine 5 new features and real-time rendering

With classic render engines, you wait after pressing the render button. In Unreal Engine, the image you see on screen is already the rendered image. You just set the resolution and save the image.

Likewise, the process is very fast for animation. Of course, as quality goes up, so does the time. Still, it is possible to get very high-quality animations in a short time.

The plan for the series

First, we cover the basics in our first five lessons. The interface, moving and copying objects and camera movement are the topics of these lessons. Then we move on to project examples at a faster pace. If you build a solid foundation, the Unreal Engine 5 new features will mean much more to you.

Summary

In this intro video we talked about Nanite and Lumen among the Unreal Engine 5 new features. We also explained navigating with game engine logic and the speed advantage of real-time rendering. You can reach the lessons of the series from our Unreal Engine 5 tutorials page. For a more comprehensive path, also see our Unreal Engine course set article. To download the program and read the current release notes, visit the official Unreal Engine website.