Automotive & Transportation

Turbocharge your digital transformation.

Review concepts and design HMIs. Test engineering scenarios and create digital twins. Build photorealistic configurators. Traditional automotive pipelines are a thing of the past. Futureproof your business for the road ahead with Unreal Engine.

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The latest news for automotive & transportation

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June 23, 2026

Unreal Engine HMI Template available now

Evaluate and accelerate HMI development in Unreal Engine with the new Unreal Engine HMI Template and Data Reduction Pipeline Plugin, released with UE 5.8.

News

June 23, 2026

Unreal Engine 5.8 is now available

Build bigger, better, more differentiated worlds in less time; easily populate them with high-fidelity animated characters and custom vegetation; and light and render them at the speed and quality your audiences demand.

News

Features for automotive

Unreal Engine ships with everything you need to create stunning immersive real-time experiences, engaging 3D configurators, state-of-the-art HMIs, and offline-rendered-quality linear media in less time than you thought possible.

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A robust pipeline for automotive visualization

Quickly and easily convert CAD data from many sources at high fidelity, and make updates to it on the fly with Datasmith Direct Link. Automate your data cleanup and optimization tasks with Dataprep tools and Python scripting; easily create configurators with the Variant Manager and Blueprint visual scripting; and deliver unique features with complete access to the UE5 source code.

Blueprint visual scripting

Source code

Photorealistic real-time rendering

Access and fine-tune 164 physically based automotive-themed materials. Get true-to-life reflections, refractions, soft shadows, and HDRI-based lighting with ray tracing and path tracing. Turn on dynamic global illumination that reacts to changes in direct lighting or geometry on the fly. And bring in entire vehicles at their original polycounts with Nanite virtualized geometry.

Automotive Materials Pack

Ray tracing and path tracing

Lumen dynamic global illumination

Nanite virtualized geometry

One asset, every deliverable

Once your data is in Unreal Engine, you can leverage it anyway you want: create gorgeous high-res stills and videos; compelling immersive VR digital showrooms; next-level HMIs with film-quality effects like fire, smoke, dust, and water; and even cloud-based configurators, delivered to anyone, anywhere with an internet connection and a web browser.

Automotive success stories

From VR to HMI: why Lotus is still one of auto’s biggest disruptors

See how a decades-old auto brand is embracing real-time tech across virtual production, HMI, and design.

Lotus Cars

Rotor Studios switches its automotive visualization pipeline to UE5

Explore how a unified 3D pipeline is helping brands cut approval cycles and speed up content delivery.

Rotor Studios

Driver’s view of cockpit and landscape through VR goggles on left, photo of driver in Siili simulator on right.

Siili Auto: creating a great HMI experience with Unreal Engine

Uncover how one company's tech ended up inside tens of millions of vehicles on the road today.

Siili Auto

Top tips on using Substrate materials for automotive visualization

Learn how industry experts balance references, lighting, and detail to achieve photorealistic results.

Lotus Cars | Renderoom | Rotor Studios

Let’s get started.

New to real-time 3D? Making the switch from another engine? Wherever you’re coming from, we’ve got onboarding, tutorials, samples, documentation, and more to help you get started.

Tutorials

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Get Started with Unreal Engine

This five-part video series takes you on a whistlestop tour of the essentials, from installing UE5 and navigating the interface to packaging your project.

Your First Hour in Unreal Engine

Follow along with this course to learn the high-level basics of UE5 by making a very simple 3D Plaformer game from start to finish.

Blueprint Introduction

Learn the basic concepts, tools, and navigation of Unreal Engine’s intuitive Blueprint visual scripting system by building simple interactions.

Documentation

Whether you’re an artist, a designer, or a programmer, our comprehensive documentation has you covered.

Unreal Engine for New Users

Understanding the Basics

Working with Scene Variants

Product Configurator Template

XR Development

Collab Viewer Templates

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Sample projects

Samples are pre-built projects designed to help you quickly learn and get working in Unreal Engine without needing to start from scratch. Download, play, deconstruct, and make them your own.

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Content Examples

This project’s stations showcase specific UE5 features, including animation, audio, Blueprints, Landscapes, materials, physics, and more.

Automotive Configurator

Explore this configurator built with real-time ray tracing, Control Rig, Blueprint visual scripting, Movie Render Queue, and Sequencer.

Automotive Substrate Materials

Built entirely on Substrate, this pack provides over 280 physically accurate, production-ready materials for automotive visualization.

City Sample

Dissect the city scene fromThe Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience—complete with buildings, vehicles, and crowds of MetaHumans.

Talks

Events like Unreal Fest bring together creators and developers from across different industries to share ideas and grow their networks. Here is a selection of talks from recent gatherings with relevance to the automotive and transportation industries.

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Procedural Worlds by McLaren: Automotive Visualization with PCG Content | Unreal Fest Orlando 2025

McLaren’s Jack Gullen walks through a procedural workflow for visualizing vehicles quickly across different markets and settings.

Epic Marketing Workflows | Unreal Fest Orlando 2025

Panellists from Rotor Studios, Team One (Publicis), and NANT Studios join Epic Games to explore how virtual production and animation are reshaping agency marketing pipelines.

Elevating Automotive Content: Integrating UE with Gaussian Splats and AI | Unreal Fest Orlando 2025

Luke Sandford of Rotor Studios explains how a hybrid pipeline combining UE, Gaussian splats, and AI cut costs for major car brands.

World’s First UE5 Vehicle Navigation: Pioneering Vector Tiles | Unreal Fest Orlando 2025

Jisu Ban, a software engineer at Hyundai AutoEver, showcases how vector tiles bring next-generation in-car navigation to life inside Unreal Engine.

Licensing

We’ve streamlined our license terms to make your choices clearer. Need something designed just for you? Work with us to create a custom license. Visit our FAQ or reach out to the community if you have any questions.

Under $1 million USD in revenue?

Free

Game developers (royalties apply after $1 million USD gross product revenue)
Individuals and small businesses (with less than $1 million USD in annual gross revenue)
For educators and schools (no revenue limits)

Access to the source code
All platforms & features
Forums and documentation on the Epic Developer Community

Download now View FAQ Licensing Terms

Over $1 million USD in revenue?

Royalty-based

If you're creating a game or application that relies on engine code at runtime and will be licensed to third party end users, you'll pay royalties and won't be required to purchase seats.

Seat-based

If you're using Unreal Engine for commercial purposes, have generated more than $1 million in the past 12 months, and are not creating a game or application that relies on engine code at runtime and will be licensed to third party end users, then a seat license fee is required.

Unreal Engine is just the beginning.

Discover our collection of creative tools, content, and resources to help turn your ideas into reality.

MetaHuman

Customize and animate highly realistic digital human characters for use in your Unreal Engine projects.

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Unreal Editor for Fortnite

Wow fans and reach new audiences by building playable, branded experiences in Fortnite.

Dive in

RealityScan

Produce high-fidelity 3D models from laser scans and photos that you can use in your real-time scenes.

Find out more

Handheld AR template

Set up your own handheld AR application that can be used to overlay a 3D digital model of a vehicle onto real-world surfaces.

Jump in

Automotive Field Guide

Explore the latest trends, use cases, and technologies driving real-time innovation in the automotive industry today.

Read on

Quixel Megascans

Browse the world’s largest library of AAA, cinema-quality assets based on real-world scan data, ready for use in your projects.

Explore now

Twinmotion

Quickly visualize initial design concepts and create stunning marketing renders—all without the need to code.

Check it out

Collab Viewer template

Get started with collaborative VR and desktop design reviews that join multiple people together in a shared experience of the same 3D content.

Jump in

Car Configurator sample

Browse the world’s largest library of AAA, cinema-quality assets based on real-world scan data, ready for use in your projects.

Take a look

Looking to use the Unreal Engine logo in your project? Access our brand guidelines and logos here.

Need help?

Connect with creators across industries and around the globe. Share everything from shortcuts to snippets to secret shader tricks. When you use Unreal Engine, you’re never alone—our community of hundreds of thousands of developers is here to support you as you bring your idea to life.

Dev Community Forums

Ask and answer questions; show off your work and get inspiration from others.

Unreal Source

Come hang out with us and our developer community on Discord.