Handling Content Validation in 24.00

General Announcements
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Hello Creators,

UEFN continues to mature and it is time to address two outstanding issues:

  1. Finalizing the list of all asset types, classes, and content available for use in UEFN
  2. Ensuring that projects are adhering to these restrictions

In order to accomplish this, we will be enabling a new system called Content Validation.
Content Validation serves two purposes:

  1. It is a declaration from Epic that any projects that pass validation will continue to work without requiring updates from creators, even as new versions of Fortnite are released.
  2. It provides a necessary layer of security to ensure that malicious users can’t take advantage of potential vulnerabilities.

This has been something of a monumental task due to the huge amount of content that Fortnite provides, and while we expect anything created inside UEFN to validate properly, not everything will be 100% correct on release. There are several issues identified in 24.00 that may cause validation errors until 24.01 is released with the fixes. Please see the list below for known issues in 24.00, and later on in the post for what you can do to resolve issues.

Known Content Validation issues in 24.00 (fixed in 24.01)

  • Several devices may have disallowed materials, textures, and meshes. This includes Barrier, Guard Spawner, SkyDome, RNG, Item Placer, Billboard, Creature Placer, Player Counter, Wildlife Spawner, and HUD Message. There may be others.
  • Compact SMG, Slug Shotgun, and Mounted Turret
  • Landscape Splines
  • Certain features of ControlRig assets
  • Certain features of Niagara systems
  • Level Blueprints (these are still disallowed, but 24.01 will automatically delete them upon upload)
  • Some devices may look visually incorrect upon reloading a level

Previously-available content no longer allowed

  • Sprays from Creative are currently disabled in UEFN and they will be removed automatically when importing levels from Creative. Any new sprays created while live editing will cause the project to fail validation until the sprays are removed.
  • Many Material Functions are no longer allowed. Only functions visible when using the Function Call node are allowed.
  • Some meshes and other assets have been removed, including the Racetrack meshes. The prop versions of these are still available.

When you attempt to upload, your files will be validated both on your machine before uploading (to save you time and bandwidth), and once again on the server after uploading has finished. If there is a problem, you will receive a list of errors in the Message Log as well as lots of important information in the Output Log. Here are some suggestions on how to resolve the issues you encounter.

BACKUP YOUR LEVEL. As you will likely be modifying lots of files to fix validation errors, make sure you have a backup that you can restore if something goes wrong.

RESAVE ALL ACTORS. This is the single most important thing you can do, and every existing project will require it. All you need to do is select all actors in the Outliner tab, then right-click on them and choose to Save.
save

USE THE OUTPUT LOG. Under the LogValkyrieValidation category, the output log will give you two vital pieces of information. First, it will give you a list of all files that have invalid content in them (either an actor or asset). Then, it will give you the name of the invalid content (an asset type, class, or Fortnite asset). If the log shows you gibberish for the asset name, such as Content/S3/UT/I083BZ4FFN2.uasset, all you need to do is paste the I083BZ4FFN2 part into the Outliner’s search box to see what actor is causing problems.

ADDRESS THE ISSUES. You won’t be able to upload without resolving validation problems. Your assets may be failing validation due to one of the known issues, because the project was created a very long time ago, because it contains imported content that isn’t allowed, or a number of other reasons. If a resave doesn’t fix it, and it’s not in the list of known issues or you can’t wait for the next release, you can attempt to resolve the issue yourself. Here are some possible ways to resolve validation errors:

  • An asset picker property points to a disallowed Fortnite asset, and a different asset needs to be chosen
  • An asset has a reference to an old plugin that it was migrated from. Make a tiny change to the asset to cause it to be marked as modified, then resave the modified asset.
  • A material has an invalid material function in it, and the function needs to be either removed or recreated within the project
  • An entire asset type is disallowed due to importing it from outside of UEFN. The asset must be removed.
  • A specific Niagara system, Control Rig, Device, or other asset is disallowed. In many cases, this is due to certain properties that may not be valid, such as certain properties on Emitter nodes. Removing, disabling, or changing these properties can sometimes resolve validation issues.
  • For old imported creative islands, you may have old versions of devices that need to be manually converted to newer versions of the device.
  • For old levels that fail because they’re referencing a level blueprint or base map, you may need to create a new level and copy data from the old one

LET US KNOW. If you have content that you believe should be valid, please let us know on the bug report forum Topics tagged unreal-engine. Anything creatable directly inside UEFN should be valid, and if it’s not then we need to fix that. Thanks to everyone for your patience and assistance in working through these issues.

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