Today at Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Epic Games presented its State of Unreal keynote, debuting Unreal Engine 5.4, showcasing cutting-edge new video game titles from UE developers and walking attendees through the 2024 roadmap for the future of creation in Fortnite.
Award-winning filmmaker Amy Hennig and her team from Skydance New Media made a surprise appearance to show how UE5.4 features and MetaHuman technology boosted the character performances for their new Marvel game, 1943: Rise of HYDRA.
The developer also announced that the revenue-sharing Epic Games Store is coming to iOS and Android later this year.
What’s Shipping in Unreal Engine 5.4
Skydance’s presentation featured Nanite Tessellation and volumetric rendering, which are shipping in Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview 1, available now.
Animation is a major focus of 5.4, which introduces Motion Matching, a simple and efficient way to animate characters in games. Later this year, Epic will release a free sample learning project that includes over 500 AAA animations created from high-end motion capture data with the locomotion and traversal dataset used in the keynote demo. And, thanks to extensive battle-testing in LEGO Fortnite development, users can now fully animate your game using Control Rig and Sequencer with no round tripping between applications.
What’s New in UEFN
Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and Creator Economy 2.0 launched at GDC 2023. Since then, creators have published more than 80,000 UEFN islands, and Epic has paid more than $320 million to creators in the first year of engagement payouts.
Epic introduced and previewed several new features on the UEFN 2024 roadmap, and announced that creators using UEFN can now easily create and animate MetaHumans as non-playable characters (NPCs) for their Fortnite islands using MetaHuman Creator and MetaHuman Animator.
The developer is also making more gaming IP from Epic widely available for Fortnite creators. Creators can now use new creative devices and race track templates to build Rocket Racing islands in Fortnite, including a Rocket Racing Vehicle Spawner device for spawning vehicles and two brand-new templates for making their own tracks.
In May, Epic will be adding Fall Guys assets, animations and Fall Guys beans to UEFN so creators can build their own frantic obstacle courses, all inside Fortnite.
The company is working towards opening up more opportunities for creators to tap into Epic Games IP as well as licensed properties, with LEGO Group announced as the first brand partner providing assets to Fortnite creators.
LEGO Comes to Fortnite Creative and UEFN
Starting today, Epic bringing even more LEGO building magic into the Fortnite ecosystem with LEGO Elements and other assets now available in Fortnite Creative and UEFN. All creators who are members of the Island Creator Program and sign the additional terms and conditions can build their own LEGO Islands using LEGO brand templates, props, consumables, items and more. When players enter new LEGO Islands built by creators, they will appear in the minifigure LEGO Style of Fortnite Outfits.
This is the latest to come from the long-term partnership between Epic Games and The LEGO Group, which kicked off in December 2023 with the launch of survival crafting adventure LEGO Fortnite. Using UEFN, The LEGO Group has since built and published several family-friendly LEGO Islands in Fortnite for players to continue their LEGO gaming journey, including three new LEGO Islands they announced onstage today.
Visit the Unreal Engine blog to read more about the State of Unreal reveals for GDC 2024. You can watch the full one-and-a-half-hour presentation below and via YouTube.