Epic Games has kicked off the process for the launch of Fab, its new unified marketplace for Unreal Engine and Unity. From today, creators can start uploading their products to the Fab Publishing Portal ahead of the launch of Fab.com in mid-October.
First announced at the Game Developers Conference in March last year, Fab.com will bring together the Unreal Engine Marketplace, Sketchfab Store, Quixel, and ArtStation Marketplace together in one place, serve digital creators across industries, including games, VFX, animation, simulation, design, architecture and fashion. Epic also plans to add support for more engines.
Epic Games describes Fab.com as a "one-stop destination" where users can discover, buy, sell, and share assets for Unreal Engine. It has a 88/12 revenue share policy that it says is intended to allow creators to "build real, sustainable businesses" on Fab.
The platform promises multi-engine, multi-platform support, offering content compatible with multiple game engines including Unreal Engine and Unity (and more to come) and dozens of digital content creation tools, such as Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D, and Adobe Substance 3D.
It will accept a wide variety of asset types, including 3D models, 2D assets for game engines, environments, audio, tools, and plugins in multiple formats. There are plans to add further file formats, including Minecraft and Roblox assets, and access to MetaHumans.
Unreal Engine and UEFN integrations will allow creators to access Fab content without leaving the editor, making it easy to bring assets directly into their projects. Meanwhile, a next-generation real-time 3D viewer will enable creators to inspect 3D assets and, giving publishers the tools to easily present their work in real-time 3D.
There will be search and discovery tools to allow creators to find the file formats or assets they’re looking for quickly, at the right price, and under their preferred licence, and multiple licence types with tiered pricing for Standard Licenses enabling sellers to make products available to purchase at different price points for personal or professional use.
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Epic's also promising AI transparency, allowing creators to control whether their products can be used to train generative AI programs and requiring sellers to clearly state if their products were created with the help of generative AI. Epic itself says it won't use, or make deals with others to use creators’ content to train generative AI programs.
Timeline for the migration from UE Marketplace to Fab
The Fab Publishing Portal is opening in two phases. Starting today, Unreal Engine Marketplace creators can use the portal to migrate their products to Fab. Just log in with the Epic Games account that you use for UE Marketplace to begin the process.
A second phase in early October will open the portal to new publishers, who will be able to sign up and begin uploading products. The second phase will also include the release a migration tool to allow Sketchfab users to move their licensable content to Fab. For now, ArtStation Marketplace will continue operating as it does today, although the aim is to allow creators to move to Fab next year.
Until the end of 2024, Fab publishers will earn a 100% revenue share on sales of Fab Standard-licensed products. There's also a launch promotion with Adobe that will give free 6-month subscription for Adobe Substance Painter and Modeler to users who publish a Fab-licensed product or make a minimum purchase of $25.
The UE Marketplace will no longer be available once Fab launches in October.
For more Unreal Engine news, see Zibra AI's new Unreal Engine plug in for real-time volumetric VFX and Reblika Software's Reblium, a character-creation tool for Unreal Engine and Unity.
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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.