Ask Epic: Art Production January 25 2024 @ 10 AM ET

[Flak]

In our next Ask Epic AMA, we’ll answer your questions about art and art production in UEFN. Whether you’re an artist, a developer looking for new ways to bring inviting content into your game, or just want to bring the awesome into your islands, we have you covered!

Members from Art and Art Production Teams will be joining us live on the forums on 2024-01-25T07:00:00Z to answer your questions.

Submit your questions directly to expert members of our team, ask about feature insights, overarching development guidance, career advice, industry questions, and of course, what you’re wondering specifically about Art Production!

Make sure to check out the backgrounds and expertise of our special Art Production guests featured below.

Do you have a question for us? Ask away by replying to this post! Please see the rules below for posting your questions.

MEET THE TEAM

Saga Alayyoubi / Senior Environment Artist
During his time at Epic, Saga Alayyoubi was the Lead Artist on the ‘Unreal for All Creators Brand Film’, and the ‘Forest Guardian’ project that was part of the launch of UEFN at GDC 2023. He was also part of the art team on the Quixel ‘90 Days’ project, the Matrix Awakens PS5 Demo, and several others. Saga received his Masters Degree in Architecture at Columbia University in 2007, and prior to joining Epic he has worked in architecture, commercial vfx and the film industry.

Alex Hammond / Creative Director
Alex is a creative director working at the Epic Innovation Lab. Having studied computer animation, Alex is a digital artist at heart with 17 years of experience within the VFX industry.
His role within the London Lab team is to help facilitate creative work and build engaging real-time experiences, primarily focusing on UEFN.

Gregory Yepes / Lead Technical Artist, UGC Tools
With over a dozen feature films and several AAA games under my belt, I understand the unique challenges facing creative efforts with a strong technological component. During my time at Epic Games, I have helped to deploy several solutions for UEFN creators, and have worked intimately with our Village Sample Project. My ongoing goal is to support and inspire creators to entertain the world.

Jamie Mossahebi / Producer
Jamie is a producer at Epic Games Innovation Lab in London with a background in both filmmaking and game development. During his time at epic he has worked on several art heavy projects in both Unreal Engine and UEFN for product showcases and branded experiences.

AMA GUIDELINES:

• Use the Reply button at the bottom. Please read through the questions to see if your question has already been asked, before posting your own.
• Please do not reply to anyone else’s post—replies should only come from Epic. If you’d like to discuss a related topic in more detail, create a new topic.
• Keep in mind, this is not a support session. Questions that are specific to your islands, account, or troubleshooting will be removed.
• Don’t forget to have fun!
• Posts not following these guidelines may be removed by moderators to keep the AMA flowing smoothly.

Thank you!

[VIZUU]

Great!!! I can’t make the audio attenuation work in UEFN inside a level sequence, and vfx. Its been a hard task to sync audio and vfx with level sequence animations. What should be the ideal workflow?

[Wertandrew]

Great stuff! I do have a question because I love the FN art style and all my maps I am trying to have my custom art/assets be an extension of FN and I want them to look as closely as possible:

If I were a modeler for FN props, what workflow tutorial would you recommend? Also, I want to learn what textures are applied in which part of the material for props and for characters, and I am confused as to why there are two types of S texture workflows.

[latunda]

Are you still working on providing or do you plan to provide new music, new sleek styles for built in ui (for example, for maps using rounds: count down, loading between rounds, results, scoreboards, fonts etc)

Uefn devs do not have the same tools and freedom as Fortnite dev team, so we still rely on some built-in devices and experiences which look and feel a bit outdated now.

[Dolphin-Dev]

What is the best way to make thumbnails for UEFN projects? And on top of this, where do you get the Fortnite models needed (like skins or weapons)?

[DimensionDragon (DimensionDr4gon)]

1. What are some of the main ways you would make a room or area feel alive/lived in? As opposed to looking uninteresting and empty

2. What are some rules or techniques used for the background of levels—to make it pop out more?

3. Wondering what’s the workflow for an enviroment artist, like in what order are things done?

Thanks for the AMA!

[King404is]

Can you add a device that allows sending events when receiving damage from a player and controlling damage characteristics will help a lot by inventing new rules of play?

[Laith_el_primo]

1.Will we be able to make our own movment and mechanics
2.when will we be able to change the completely Hud like lifebar,inventory etc
3.will we be able to make our own cars in future?
4.will we be able to make a custom character in uefn

[vOrdiant]

Can we please get the full sequencer settings, including exports and being able to render images/cinematics the same way we can in UE5? That’s a really crucial part of marketing a game, and at this moment its not possible in UEFN…

[VIZUU]

Whats the correct way of using this two options:

[D1KL0R41K]

1. When will I be able to add my own weapons?
2. Will we be able to improve the graphics for our modes in the future? To make it more realistic?
3. What do you think about the great popularity of RP games? How do you feel about someone making a free multiplayer like they did with Samp/mta/fivem?
4. Will we be able to customize the characters for our servers? Clothes, hairstyles, tattoos, jewerly or completely create characters from scratch like in an MMORPG, is it possible?
5. What new features are coming in 2024 and 2025?
6. Will we be able to add new systems? Melee fight?
7. What’s new in store for the implementation of large open worlds?
8. What can you say about your new competitors? Everywhere game and s&box? What will be the advantages of UEFN?
9. Are your expectations about UEFN justified? Or did you expect much more?
10. Will UEFN eventually become a platform for creating individual games, servers for every taste with rich functionality?
11. Will we be able to create or make our own melee system? For example, as it happens in pve only for its own mode, is it even possible to create more complex systems for your servers?

[ARABWARLORD]

Hi Epic

Creating Survival games would be Levels better if we can have Inventory chests like the ones in Lego Fortnite or like the Fortnite Save the world homebase Storage, and maybe an option that lets creators enable and disable inventory so players can hold more than 5 weapons and items just like the Fortnite lego mode.

Thank you

[dmytrogladkyi]

Hello, Epic!

I have a couple of questions regarding creating modular art for the UEFN:

1. How do we make interactable doors like in Galleries included in UEFN?

For example:

There is a property to set Door/Wall mesh but they don’t have any effect:

Is it possible at all?
If yes, how do we set custom mesh for wall/door so that it makes effect?

2. What does mean “Optimized/Scaled for Fortnite”?

Can you provide any good practices on making sellable assets on Sketchfab? How can we make assets optimized for Fortnite?

[Tristanfrun]

Hi Epic just want to ask when the new chapter 5 weapons are being added.Also I want to ask if you guys are thinking about adding vault’s to Creative.Thank you for your time.

[User-49cfbc2cb8]

Could you make it easier to add custom sound effects for when a player dies in a FFA gamemode or when the round ends, etc. Because its pretty complicated right now.

[Flak]

Hey everyone, just a reminder this is an Art Production AMA. Please keep your questions related to the topic. Thank you!

[tyler.dawson]

With custom weapons being promised end of last year, I’d expect we’ll get that feature sooner than later?
With that in mind what will the creation of custom weapons look like?

• Will we be able out create our weapon models?
• If so will we be able to create our own animations for our custom weapons, or will we just match an animation for an already existing gun type to the weapon we made?
• What tools will exist for custom weapons when released, and what might be planned for the future?

[Flak]

Question from Discord:

Hello ! I hope you are doing well ! I wanted to know if there were official tutorials for animating materials? like making a material/element change color in game (with VERSE surely?), making the material of an element be animated in game etc. (edited)

Thank you in advance !

[Magril]

Hi i would like to know about reboot van i’m asking this for long time but no reply and no blog so i’m kinda helpless right now. I want to reduce player reboot card time also after a round ends reboot card still showing and the second round if player is no other team also is this possible to do this " if one of my teammate dies and after his death if i get a kill i will be able to pick up my teammate automatically ".

[VIZUU]

Fortnite models are extremely well done, meshes, rig, materials, textures optmized… How could we as creators learn more about this process so our custom assets can follow the same workflows and standards?