Hello Unreal Community! My name is Dakota and for the last year and change we have been working on a plugin called Sprite Forge. A 2D asset creation tool and pipeline for Unreal Engine 5. I have used other programs for 2D art creation and there was always something missing, or feature that had little to do with games and Unreal Engine, that always caused friction in the asset creation phase. Another bottleneck was the programs inability to extract the features of Unreal by default. Well not for much longer.
What is Sprite Forge:
Sprite Forge is a 2D Asset creation suite, and when I say Asset, I mean more than just painting. Sprite Forge can Paint assets, Sculpt 2D Normal maps for Unreal’s default lighting system, Animate Sprites, Save as .uasset, export as normal formats, and so much more (we maaaaaaaaay be looking into a method to create 2D Animation Blueprints Native 
). And Sprite Forge wasn’t just built to support developers and artists, but a community. Brushes, palettes, templates; all designed from the ground up to be shared by others. Ultimately, we want Sprite Forge to feel like it belongs in Unreal, because we believe it deserves to. And we want it to be for the Solo-Dev or small Indie Studio.
(All Icons are placeholders. Looking for an artist, but at least they work 
)
Why is Sprite Forge:
I want to pull as many people as I can to Unreal Engine. I have dedicated a large part of my life to this engine and I want to share it with people. Especially the upcoming generations. I mean no disrespect when I say this, but Epic’s team is headed toward 3D innovation and they have made insane progress toward that end, but I do not think the 2D game industry is dead by any means and when I ask 2D developers what engine they use, I wish I heard Unreal Engine more than I do. So to that end Sprite Forge was born. I want to remove the friction not just from Switching engines, but also Integration. I can’t claim a lot of “Runtime” features (2D AnimBlueprints, Collision Channel overhaul, 2D AnimNotify, 2D Root Motion, Procedural Generation tools, better Dynamic Material Support, Flash Style Bone-Based animation) as of this writing, as Sprite Forge is still in its toddler phase and will need more exposure and time.
Where is Sprite Forge:
Sprite Forge is close to feature complete for asset creation. Minimal Crashes occur. Current Feature set is better than any “Individual” 2D authoring suite in my opinion. Especially for Unreal Engine. I hope we get better at it every day. It was built with customization in mind with many quality-of-life settings in the plugin’s editor preferences, from key bindings all the way to the styling of the editor itself. Layer support that coexists with Animation support giving a seamless experience. It feels good most of the time for most workflows. There are a few clunky UI bits, and slow tools to use, and we are addressing those as our highest priority now.
When is Sprite Forge:
We are currently targeting Epic’s Mega Grant in July to fully fund the development of Sprite Forge’s Runtime Modules. Although we believe we will have a feature rich, complete plugin system in the next month or so, we would love to at least try to get support from Epic to do this. The project has been completely self-funded up to this point because I love what I do and I will do it until they throw dirt on me, however bills must be paid. But maybe not by the community! So here is the plan. We will apply for the Mega-Grant for between $75,000-$125,000 (Depending on what features remain on the map at that point, and feature requests after this post) which will take us to the third quarter of 2027. If we are selected and receive enough funding to overhaul the Runtime side, we want to make this package free to the community and marketplace. This will bring in the absolute most users to bolster the community. Bigger community, more feature requests, more updates, better product, bigger community. Simple. We may however be forced to release on the Fab Marketplace to float until decision time at the end of the year. We will be targeting a price point of $39.99 as this is what we consider a fair price for a one-time purchase and no subscriptions for a product that is as versatile as Sprite Forge in Unreal Engine (with continuing updates and continued new engine version support). When/if we are notified of the acceptance of our targeted grant amount, we will attempt to work with Epic to change it to free, bringing in a bigger community than ever.
Who is Sprite Forge:
We are a team of 2 people (USA). Which in part is why this has taken so long. We want to bring on actual artists to the team, but we have to wait for that. But since we are a small team, we can work fast on feature requests. So, if you have a feature request, suggestion, or even just opinions, please leave them below or email UnrealGameAssist@gmail.com. If you are artists, then doubly so, since we are primarily programmers, it would give us a better idea what type of workflows to support.
I will be posting features, screenshots, and updates here. We have decided to make a Youtube channel to demonstrate tools and features as well for the future. Soon you can have the privilege to bear with me as I struggle to speak on camera. But we will be doing videos on the software soon and I will link them below.
In the future we hope to bring even more tools for the community under the same umbrella. Material painting, 3D modelling, 3D Sculpting and Retopology, Music Creation… I hope the sky is the limit.