Epic Video games launches Fab unified digital content material market

Epic Video games has launched Fab, a brand new unified content material market that permits builders to entry a variety of digital belongings from a single on-line market.

Fab is a one-stop vacation spot the place builders can uncover, purchase, promote, and share digital belongings, and
it’s now reside. You may most likely consider it as the required basis for a metaverse, ought to Epic Video games ever actually need to construct it. And this asset retailer additionally has belongings constructed with the Unity sport engine, and sooner or later, it’ll have belongings from all sport engines, Epic stated.

Fab is the successor to the Unreal Engine Market and Sketchfab Retailer, and the brand new residence for Quixel Megascans — in addition to Unity belongings. This new open market helps all sorts of creators with content material to be used throughout Unreal Engine, Unity 3D, Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and different digital content material creation instruments.

Unreal Engine builders can entry Fab straight within the Unreal Engine 5 Editor, and Fornite creators can uncover Fortnite prepared belongings by Fab in UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite, which is for user-generated content material and third-party skilled Fortnite creators).

Epic Video games stated you possibly can already uncover an unlimited providing of top quality, real-time-ready sport belongings, environments, VFX, audio, animations, characters, plug-ins, and extra.

Background

Epic Video games collected its marketplaces like Sketchfab by acquisitions through the years.

Invoice Clifford, vice chairman of Unreal Engine and Marketplaces at Epic Video games, stated in an interview with GamesBeat that Epic Video games CEO Tim Sweeney advised him some years in the past that his mission was to convey collectively the totally different belongings of the Unreal Engine Market, the Sketchfab Retailer, Artstation and Quixel Megascans. 

“We have these really great, vibrant communities and combined, just in millions and millions of high-quality digital assets that ultimately make it faster and cheaper for people to build worlds,” Clifford stated. “We saw some great statistics in marketplaces, very widely used by UE developers. About 50% of active projects are using assets from Unreal Engine Marketplace. It was super valuable, but we had multiple disjointed experiences. So we wanted to try and bring them together into a single destination where users could access all the content, discover, share, buy and sell any type of digital asset on Fab.”

(Tim Sweeney might be a digital speaker at our upcoming GamesBeat Subsequent 2024 occasion on October 28-29. You need to use this code, gbn24dean, for a 25% low cost).

It’s been a labor of affection for about 2.5 years of improvement, Clifford stated.

“There’s a lot of ambition for the product. What you’re seeing here is a step change improvement from Unreal Engine Marketplace and each of our marketplaces on their own,” Clifford stated. “We’ve got a very aggressive growth plan for 2025, and we will continuously add features and also connect Fab to the broader ecosystem of content creation tools through APIs.”

Discovering (even Unity) belongings on Fab

Fab affords content material suitable with a number of sport engines, all kinds of asset varieties, varied
licensing choices, and extra. As we speak on Fab you possibly can:

It’s straightforward to browse the in depth content material library that features top-quality 3D belongings, VFX, environments and extra from superb creators and studios like KitBash3D, Dekogon Studios and Leartes Studios.

Creators can use Channels to seek out content material suitable with Unreal Engine, UEFN and Unity. And so they can select the license that meets their wants. Fab affords a Inventive Commons license and the Private or Skilled tier of a Commonplace License. The Fab Commonplace License allows you to use the belongings, together with Megascans, in any sport engine or device you need.

Builders can purchase the Quixel Megascans library without spending a dime by the top of 2024 — free to be used with all engines and digital content material creation instruments. With one click on on this new web page, builders can declare over 17,000 Megascans, together with 10 packs with model new scene information from Quixel. And Epic Video games stated devs needs to be looking out without spending a dime sponsored content material from Quixel and different creators on Fab.

Epic stated builders could make knowledgeable selections about what they need to obtain or buy. They’ll examine 3D belongings with Fab’s real-time 3D viewer to know what they’re shopping for earlier than they make a purchase order. They’ll additionally see on every product particulars web page if a product was created with the assistance of generative AI, and builders can use filters to incorporate or exclude generative AI merchandise from their searches.

Developes may also discover belongings which might be proper for his or her viewers. Mature content material is allowed on Fab.com however people whose dad and mom have enabled age ranking restrictions utilizing Epic’s Parental Controls will be unable to entry Mature content material. Devs have the choice to ‘show,’ ‘blur’ or ‘hide’ mature content material on Fab. Mature content material can’t be utilized in UEFN since these belongings exceed Fortnite’s most age ranking.

Builders may also redeem a free six-month subscription for Adobe Substance Painter and Modeler.

A reside demo

The positioning has a featured content material carousel in addition to a carousel for featured sellers. There are additionally product classes that make it simpler for folks to seek out what they’re searching for, stated Justin Renninger, director of UX at Epic Video games, in an interview with GamesBeat. 

“From a category standpoint, they can drill deeper and deeper down our taxonomy and find what they’re looking for,” Renninger stated.

There are additionally tabs the place devs can discover Quixel Megascans without spending a dime. The Unity content material sits proper alongside the content material for Unreal and UEFN. The aim is to let anybody organically uncover what they’re searching for whilst they see recent content material that they didn’t know was there, Renninger stated.

“The idea of our channel for getting UEFN and Unreal is that this is filter or scoped view for anyone who’s creating with Unreal Engine or UEFN, where you can find just assets and just products that work within the different game engines,” Renninger stated.

The Unity channel has content material that’s simply as straightforward to look by because the Unreal content material.

“We’re encouraging ourselves to include all available formats, so that as a buyer, when I purchase this, I’m getting access to both formats here,” Renninger stated.

He confirmed an instance of what it’s prefer to seek for 3D graphics imagery that has subway content material. You seek for the phrase and discover all types of pictures. You may have a look at one thing with the 3D viewer and you may immediately rotate it and see what it seems like from all angles, Renninger stated. Within the demo, he zoomed in on a monster {that a} developer might place within the subway, after it was flooded with water. Builders can set the value for the content material they’re promoting within the retailer.

What’s subsequent?

Epic Video games stated it has formidable targets for Fab and right now’s launch is only the start. Over the approaching
months, it’ll proceed bettering the consumer expertise, including new content material and delivery new options.

Epic plans to introduce new file codecs together with Roblox and Minecraft belongings, entry to MetaHumans, a brand new itemizing assessment system, product particular FAQs, a pipeline to make it straightforward for creators to publish content material straight from UEFN to Fab, and new analytics to reinforce the vendor expertise.

And in 2025, the corporate is making a cross-section of the Megascans library free to all customers no matter which engine or platform they’re utilizing. This starter pack will comprise greater than 1,500 hand-picked belongings, together with quite a lot of common 3D belongings, crops, timber, surfaces, decals, imperfections and the ten packs Quixel launched on Fab’s launch day.

Epic Video games stated it’s on a journey to create a neighborhood and market for all of your digital content material wants.

Over time, Epic Video games desires to graduate from serving to devs make their very own video games to creating contributions to the broader “metaverse,” or the subsequent technology of the web that mixes a lot of experiences in a spatial method.

“There’s long-term strategic value to this,” Clifford stated. “Our first step was to bring everything together into one place and build on top of common infrastructure that that can scale. We take the best of all of our existing marketplaces and bring it into one destination. Connecting it to various tools is the next step, and to different metaverse platforms (after that) is the next step.”

Interoperability, he stated, is vital to the event of the open metaverse.

I requested why Epic Video games would need to spotlight Unity belongings.

“We’re trying to build a destination for everyone, not just for Unreal Engine developers,” Clifford stated.

After all, the belongings aren’t all that versatile. You may’t simply combine and match Unity belongings with Unreal belongings and anticipate them to work collectively.

“We’re not magically solving the interoperability issue here, but we are giving people the opportunity to sell all different types of formats with different consumers and buyers through one purchase, reducing the fragmentation of the buying experience for creators,” Clifford stated.

Within the quick time period, Epic Video games will roll out a brand new rankings and assessment system, changing a five-star ranking system at the moment getting used. The corporate will add technical FAQs as effectively. It’ll additionally grow to be straightforward for UEFN creators to publish straight from UEFN into Fab. The corporate will add different sport engines like Godot codecs, Roblox, and Minecraft as effectively.

“This is definitely just the beginning of a long road ahead,” Clifford stated.