The best Unreal Engine 5 courses can help you get up to speed with what's becoming one of the most popular game and 3D creation platforms. Whether you want to use Epic Games' toolset to develop video games, VFX, product and architectural visualisation or animation, there's a course or tutorial out there to help you find your way.
UE5 is a fairly complex platform with many tools and features and lots of potential add-ons. The learning curve can be daunting to newcomers (see our guide to the best game development software for alternatives), but UE5 courses and tutorials can help you get there.
If you're still wondering what the platform is, see our explainer, what is Unreal Engine 5? You might also want one of the best laptops for game development to ensure your hardware can cope with the program's demands. In the meantime, here's our pick of the best Unreal Engine 5 courses for different levels and uses. Make sure you also check out our own collection of quick Unreal Engine 5 tutorials.
The best Unreal Engine 5 course for beginners
Your first hour in Unreal Engine
Epic Games' documentation for Unreal Engine 5 might not be perfect, but the developer does provide some good overviews to help beginners to the platform get up and running.
In 'Your First Hour in Unreal Engine' (actually 50 minutes, so there's time for a cup of tea afterwards to help process all the information), you'll follow along with the creation of a small project and learn the high-level basics, including how to create new projects with templates, add custom or premade assets, add actors, create lighting, make Blueprints, and share your project. Project files are provided in an online learning kit.
The best free Unreal Engine course
Create your first game in Unreal Engine 5
Epic Games also has a tutorial that walks through how to code a first-person adventure game in Unreal Engine 5. You’ll use C++ and Unreal Editor to set up a new UE code project and build a custom player character and see how you can extend your C++ class to a Blueprint (Unreal's visual coding tool) to tweak variables or use it in a more visual way.
The nice thing about this Unreal Engine 5 course is that it's neatly broken down into stages with screenshots, so you can follow along at your own pace without having to constantly pause and rewind a video and without losing yourself in UE5's complex interface.
The best Unreal Engine 5 Course for game design
Game Design Professional Certificate by Epic Games
Coursera hosts courses in all kinds of creative fields, from traditional art to UI design, and they come from a wide variety of providers. This game design course is provided by Epic Games itself. It's actually a series of eight courses, and it doesn't focus exclusively on the game engine but on the whole process of designing a video game, including fundamental theory and practical considerations.
Nevertheless, a good bulk of the course focuses on using Unreal Engine 5, including Blueprint scripting, world-building, visual and audio development, and UX and UI design. And you'll get to practise skills in Unreal Engine through hands-on assessments, graded and ungraded quizzes. In the final three courses in the certificate programme, you'll create the assets and code for your game.
Coursera charges around $50 per month, so the cost of obtaining the certificate will vary depending on how long you take to complete the courses.
Epic Games also hosts its annual Unreal Fellowship: Games bootcamp for professional game developers who have at least two years' experience in the sector. Keep a look out for the next enrollment period towards the end of the year.
The best Unreal Engine Course for VFX
Unreal Engine 5: One Course Solution For Niagara VFX
Unreal Engine 5 is increasingly used for VFX and CGI. The key tool here is Niagara, a powerful module-based system for creating particle and general VFX. Technical artists can use this to create effects like smoke, sparks and magic, with complex behaviours and real-time previews. There are lots of tutorials around on YouTube for specific tasks, but if you're serious about using Unreal Engine 5 for VFX, it may be worth the investment to go deeper and do a complete course.
This one-course solution from 3D artist and programmer Vince Petrelli provides 17.5 hours of on-demand video focusing on everything from the uses of different Niagara emitters to creating master materials, baking out noise texture, creating multiple environment FX and attacking FX and using Blueprint to program VFX behaviour. The list price is $59.99, but Udemy often runs discounts of up to 80% off, so make sure you sign up when there's an offer.
Epic Games also hosts an annual Unreal Fellowship intensive blended learning course aimed at experienced industry professionals in film, animation, and VFX. It tends to open for enrollment towards the end of the year, so keep a look out.
The best Unreal Engine 5 course for automotive visualisation
Unreal Engine Automotive Masterclass
We've noted the work of Unreal Engine auto animator Post Processed before in Aston Martin's CGI ads and his personal Unreal Engine 5 F1 cinematic. If you're specifically interested in this major niche area of 3D visualisation in Unreal Engine 5, you might want to check out his Unreal Engine Automotive Masterclass, which covers rigging, animation, lighting, rendering plus colour grading in DaVinci Resolve too.
By the end of the course, you should be able to rig almost any car, animate it and prepare renders to pass it to Nuke Composer for post production. The price starts at $815, but Post Processed also shares occasional tutorials for free on his YouTube channel.
The best Unreal Engine 5 course for archviz
As we saw in our guide to what is archviz?, real-time rendering is revolutionising architectural visualisation. Both archviz artists and architects themselves can benefit from learning how to use Unreal Engine 5 to visualise and iterate on architectural designs.
VR Division's course looks at using Unreal Engine 5 in combination with the geospatial software Cesium. The full course comprises 10 modules, with each part focusing on a core element of the engine from getting started to packaging a project.
Quick tutorials
How to animate a character in Unreal Engine 5
In the quick Unreal Engine 5 tutorial above, Gorka Games show how to animate a character by creating an animation blueprint and a blendspace in Unreal Engine 5. It's short and to the point but doesn't skimp on the all important step-by-step details.
How To Create MetaHumans In Unreal Engine 5.6
Unreal Engine 5.6 brings integrates the MetaHuman Creator directly into the platform. In this succinct tutorial, Smart Poly walks us through the new process, including selecting a preset or a creating custom character and then rigging and animating.
Create your own MetaHuman
You can also create a MetaHuman of a real person. In this tutorial, Bad Decisions Studio show the whole process, from 3D scanning their model using the Polycam app on a smartphone to cleaning up the scan in Blender and optimising the character in Unreal. The energy of the tutorial makes it engaging, and the process of creating a 3D human clone is broken down in a way that makes it easy to follow.
For more on Epic Games' platform, see our guide to Unreal Engine vs Unity. If you need other software to complete your workflow, see our guide to the best 3D modelling software and the best animation software.
