Fortnite’s Creative toolset, which allows players to design their own islands, has been around since 2018. Now, however, the introduction of the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) brings even greater creative flexibility to the platform.
Launched in Public Beta today at the State of Unreal, UEFN is a version of the Unreal Editor that can create and publish experiences directly to Fortnite. Consequently, creators and developers have a whole new world of creative options for producing games and experiences to be enjoyed by millions of Fortnite players.
UEFN Introduces Verse Programming Language
Moreover, UEFN provides an opportunity for creators to use the new programming language, Verse, for the first time. Verse is aimed at helping UEFN creators easily create new game logic and manipulate or chain together devices.
It is being designed as a programming language for the metaverse, with upcoming features to enable future scalability to vast open worlds built by millions of creators for billions of players.
Verse is launching in Fortnite today and will come to all Unreal Engine users in a couple of years.
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Expanding the Creator Economy with UEFN
In addition to UEFN, Epic Games is launching Creator Economy 2.0, including engagement payouts—a new way for eligible Fortnite island creators to receive money based on engagement with their published content.
Engagement payouts proportionally distribute 40% of the net revenue from Fortnite’s Item Shop and most real-money Fortnite purchases to the creators of eligible islands and experiences.
Fab: A Unified 3D Marketplace for All Creators
Later this year, Epic Games plans to bring together its marketplaces—Unreal Engine Marketplace, Sketchfab, Quixel Bridge, and the ArtStation Marketplace—to launch Fab, a unified marketplace where creators can find, publish, and share digital assets for use in creating digital experiences.
Fab will bring together a massive community where creators will earn an 88% revenue share, and the marketplace will host all types of digital content supporting all engines, all metaverse-inspired games which support imported content, and the most popular digital content creation packages.
Preview of Unreal Engine 5.2 and MetaHuman Animator
Unreal Engine 5.2 offers further refinement and optimizations alongside several new features. The new Substrate shading system, which gives artists the freedom to compose and layer different shading models, will be shipping in 5.2 as Experimental.
In addition, new in-editor and run-time Procedural Content Generation (PCG) tools will also ship as Experimental in 5.2.
Furthermore, this summer will see the launch of MetaHuman Animator, a new feature set for the MetaHuman framework.
MetaHuman Animator will enable users to reproduce any facial performance as high-fidelity animation on MetaHuman characters using an iPhone or stereo helmet-mounted cameras.
Limitless Opportunities for Developers and Creators
With powerful tools, a vast marketplace for digital content, unfettered access to a global audience, and a new equitable economy, the opportunities for creators are limitless.
The State of Unreal featured breathtaking demos from Epic partners, proving that an exciting new era of virtual worlds, games, and experiences is already beginning to dawn.
