Epic Games set a good precedent for itself at the GDC held in 2023: the company launched its Unreal Editor for Fortnite creation tool, known by its acronym UEFN. This year, Epic has announced several new features that are already on their way for UEFN, such as the arrival of MetaHuman technology.
Epic describes MetaHuman as a “complex framework that allows for the creation, animation, and use of highly realistic digital human characters.” Essentially, it allows us to create and animate hyperrealistic humans to then use them in Unreal Engine projects, a graphics engine also used by Fortnite.
Through MetaHuman Creator, we will be able to design these types of characters without the need for an advanced team. In fact, Epic states on its website that MetaHuman Creator can be used even on an iPhone.
From now on, MetaHumans will be available in UEFN. Now, any character created with MetaHuman Creator and animated with MetaHuman Animator can be imported to UEFN. Additionally, it can also be used as an NPC in community-created games.
In addition to hyperrealistic humans, Epic has also confirmed the arrival of the first-person camera for UEFN. Epic’s tool will additionally include a “sandbox physics gameplay”.
To top it off, Epic has also confirmed that next year we will see the first season of Fortnite entirely made in UEFN. With all these innovations on the table, it is clear the goal that Epic Games pursues with Fortnite: to turn it into a gaming platform or metaverse, full of content generated by the players themselves. According to The Verge, Epic claims that users have already built over 80,000 islands through UEFN.
