Epic Games has held its latest State of Unreal presentation, during which it demoed new features for Unreal Engine 5.2, fresh peeks at Unreal Engine games such as NCSoft’s Project M and Ninja Theory’s Hellblade sequel, plus a live demo of Fortnite’s brand new UE5-powered creative mode.
Oh, and Tim Sweeney gave his thoughts on the concept of an “open metaverse”, which he predicted would arrive in the next decade.
Today’s presentation began with a look at new procedural generation technology being baked into UE 5.2, which will allow developers to build a small section of an open-world environment, from which Unreal Engine can then build out a much larger area at scale. A demo video showed how components can be switched out on the fly, with elements such as a bridge adapting automatically to the environment around.
Metahuman, Epic’s impressive technology to build digital humans, is getting an upgrade named Metahuman Animator, which can quickly turn performance capture from an iPhone video into an Unreal Engine-powered in-game asset.
Hellblade actress Melina Juergens took to the stage to show off a live demo of that, and how it was being used by Ninja Theory in the development of Senua’s Saga Hellblade 2 – you can see that above.
Later this year, Epic will merge its various game asset libraries into a single interface, blending together Quixel Megascans, ArtStation, Sketchfab, Unreal Engine Marketplace into… Fab. Designed for use with all game engines, it will fully launch later this year and include asset packs from game developers such as Supermassive Games (with a Dark Pictures pack), or celebrities such as Fortnite collaborator Marshmello, with an 88/12 percent revenue split.
Speaking of Fortnite, today was the day we finally saw Epic Games’ brand new creative toolset for the title, which will allow Unreal Engine 5 projects to be published directly into the hugely-successful game.
“We’ve been working towards this moment for a very long time… Fortnite is becoming an ecosystem,” Epic Games said. “That means new tools to design, develop and publish games, and a new economy that rewards developers. These updates bring us one step closer to Epic’s vision of a connected metaverse with billions of players enjoy high-quality creations made by millions of developers.