Plugin Catalog
The full set of plugins worth knowing about for UE 5.7 , grouped by purpose. Built-in plugins ship with the engine; Marketplace and community plugins must be downloaded.
Legend
Tag
Meaning
B Built-in (Epic, ships with UE)
M Marketplace (Fab / Epic Marketplace)
C Community / open source
★ Recommended baseline for most projects
Rendering
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Nanite B ★
Virtualized geometry — handles tens of millions of polys
Lumen B ★
Real-time GI + reflections
Virtual Heightfield Mesh B
World-partition heightfield meshing
Virtual Textures (SVT/RVT) B ★
Sparse / runtime virtual textures
Path Tracer B
Reference offline ray tracer for cinematics
DLSS M ★
NVIDIA AI upscaling (also exposes Reflex, Frame Gen, Ray Reconstruction)
FSR3 M
AMD upscaling alternative
Streamline M ★
NVIDIA's unified upscaler/Reflex/FG SDK wrapper
NRD (NVIDIA Real-time Denoiser) C
Drop-in denoiser for custom RT passes
Pixel Streaming B
Stream the UE viewport over WebRTC to browsers
Movie Render Queue B ★
Offline-quality renders for cinematics
OpenColorIO B
Color management for VFX-quality pipelines
Composure B
Real-time multi-layer compositing
glTF Importer B ★
Editor glTF import
glTF Runtime M ★
Runtime glTF loading from disk/URL
USD Importer B
OpenUSD import / live stage
Datasmith Runtime B
Runtime CAD/3D ingestion
Niagara B ★
GPU-driven VFX
Niagara Fluids B
Real-time fluid simulations
Geometry
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Alembic Importer B ★
Imports .abc into Static Mesh / Skeletal / Geometry Cache
Geometry Script B ★
Editor + runtime mesh authoring via BP/Python
Modeling Tools Editor Mode B ★
In-editor poly modeling, sculpting, retopo
Mesh Modeling Toolset B
Lower-level toolkit consumed by Modeling Tools
Procedural Content Generation Framework B ★
PCG core
PCG Examples B
Reference PCG graphs
PCG Biomes B
Layered biome blending
PCG Subdivision B
Recursive partitioning operators
PCG Geometry Script Interop B
Generate / sample meshes from PCG
OpenLand M
Runtime landscape (procedural worlds)
Voxel Plugin Pro M
Voxel worlds, marching cubes, smooth terrain
Volumes & Atmosphere
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Volumetrics B
Heterogeneous Volumes, SparseVolumeTexture
OpenVDB Importer B
Bring Houdini/Embergen .vdb into UE as SVTs
Sky Atmosphere B
Physically-based sky
Volumetric Clouds B
Raymarched real-time clouds
Exponential Height Fog B
Atmospheric fog (not technically a volume but pairs)
Animation
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Animation Budget Allocator B
Crowd-scale animation budget control
Animation Sharing B
Share evaluated poses across actors
Control Rig B ★
Procedural rigs, IK, retargeting
IK Rig B ★
Skeleton retargeting, runtime IK
Motion Trail Editor B
Visualize anim curves in the viewport
Sequencer Animation Tools B
Anim editing inside Sequencer
Motion Matching B ★
Pose-search-based locomotion (Lyra-style)
Chooser B ★
Data-driven anim/asset selection
MetaHuman SDK B ★
High-fidelity character creation
MetaHuman Animator B
Facial mocap from iPhone footage
Live Link B
External mocap / face tracking
Live Link Face (iOS) B
Free Apple ARKit face capture
Take Recorder B
Mocap take recording
Cloth Asset (Dataflow) B
UE 5.4+ next-gen cloth
Audio
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
MetaSounds B ★
DSP graph for procedural sound
Audio Synesthesia B
Audio analysis (NRT/realtime)
Audio Modulation B
Modulation routing, mixing
Soundscape B
Procedural ambient audio
Quartz B
Sample-accurate scheduling for music
Resonance Audio B
Spatial audio
Convolution Reverb B
Impulse-response reverb
Wwise M
Audiokinetic middleware integration
FMOD M
FMOD middleware integration
UI
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
UMG B ★
The default UI framework
Common UI B ★
Input routing, focus, controller-friendly
Web Browser B
CEF-based browser widget
Web Browser Widget B
UMG wrapper for above
WebUI (tracerinteractive) C ★
Modern CEF alternative with render-to-material
Ultralight UE C
Lightweight HTML/JS UI
Coherent Gameface M
AAA HTML/CSS/JS UI
Slate B
Low-level UI framework (UMG sits on top)
Networking
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Online Subsystem Steam / EOS B ★
Platform networking
Iris B
New replication system in UE 5.x
WebSocket B
Native WebSocket client/server
SocketIO Client C
Socket.IO bidirectional messaging
VaRest C
REST/HTTP/JSON helpers in BP
Pixel Streaming B
WebRTC video out of the editor/runtime
Replication Graph B
Scale replication to many actors
Push Model B
Dirty-bit replication driver
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Python Editor Script Plugin B ★
Editor-time Python
Editor Utility Widgets B ★
In-editor UMG panels
Asset Manager B
Streaming/identity for runtime asset loading
Data Validation B
Asset linting
Visual Logger B
Spatial event log
Gauntlet B
Automation test harness
Functional Testing B
Authored gameplay tests
Replays (Demo Net Driver) B
Match recording
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
UnrealClaudeMCP C ★
MCP server in UE — drive editor from Claude/Cursor/any MCP client
Unreal AI Connection C
Sister/fork repo with 105 tools
UnrealJS (ncsoft) C
V8 inside UE — script in JavaScript
Claude Code Game Studios C
Claude Code template (49 agents + 72 skills) — not a UE plugin but pairs with one
Web & Streaming
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Pixel Streaming B ★
Stream UE to browser
WebRTC B
Underlying WebRTC stack
Media Framework B ★
MediaPlayer + MediaTexture for video sources
NDI IO M ★
NewTek NDI in/out as MediaTexture
Spout C
Windows texture sharing
Aja / Blackmagic B
SDI capture cards
Live Streaming Tools M
OBS/RTMP bridges
VR / AR / XR
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
OpenXR B ★
Cross-vendor XR runtime
OpenXR Eye Tracker B
Foveation, gaze input
OpenXR Hand Tracking B
Hand pose
Pixel Streaming for XR M
Cloud-stream to headsets
AR Core B
Android AR
AR Kit B
iOS AR
AAA / Cinematic
Plugin
Tag
Purpose
Sequencer B ★
Cinematic editor
Movie Render Queue B ★
Cinematic-grade render
Take Recorder B
Multi-source mocap recording
NDisplay B
Multi-display / LED-wall rendering
In-Camera VFX B
Virtual production for ICVFX
Switchboard B
Multi-machine cinematic coordination
DMX B
Stage lighting integration
Live Link B
External feed source
Curation philosophy
Always enable: Modeling Tools, Geometry Script, Python Editor Scripting, Common UI, PCG (★ entries).Enable when needed: Pixel Streaming, Composure, OpenXR — heavy, only enable if you use them.Avoid mixing: DLSS + FSR + XeSS — use Streamline as the unified wrapper instead.For shipping: verify each Marketplace plugin's licensing and platform support before depending on it.
See per-category deep-dive pages in the sidebar.