UEFN: Adding Animated Character Skins: Encouraged or Piracy?

Development Asset Creation
, , ,
1

I’m just getting started with UEFN, and decided to get a lay of the land by checking out what the most popular UEFN experiences are.

I’ve noticed that some of the popular UEFN islands use thumbnails of popular creators, such {3451-3711-0789}, which is a “Boss Battle” map where you fight a giant version of Mr Beast, who is also featured prominently in the map’s thumbnail.

Using thumbnails of popular content creators looks like an interesting way to get people to check out your map, so I decided to look into how I would add, for example, the Mr Beast fortnite skin into one of my maps, and possibly add custom animation to him.

In my research, I noticed some things:

  1. There doesn’t seem to be any way to animate regular UEFN characters. If you want to make your own animation, you need to import them as a skeletal mesh
  2. Most fortnite characters, including Mr Beast, are not available in the UEFN editor UI as characters you can pick from
  3. There is a Character Spawner Device, which allows you to specify Fortnite Skins, and if you know the direct asset path for a fortnite character, you can paste that asset path in to load them, even if they aren’t exposed in the UEFN UI. The UEFN UI for this device currently only shows a mannequin mesh as an available option.
  4. If you use the workaround in #3, to specify a character asset other than the Mannequin, your map will be blocked at upload time, informing you that you have used some disallowed assets

All of this tell me that UEFN is not set up to allow people to use arbitrary character skins in their maps, and that there is actually some protection in place to prevent people from using them. It appears that people who have maps that include these skins, have downloaded them from third party sites as raw meshes, and then re-rigged and re-imported them.

My question is: Is this usage of Fortnite’s assets allowed? Can I use third party tools to access fortnite character skins and add them to my map? Or is this not allowed, and are the current maps grandfathered in for some reason, or have they simply escaped notice by the Epic moderation teams and may be banned at some point in the future?

4 Likes
2

I hope you get a response but I feel like these types of questions generally don’t get an official response. So I’ll just link to the Island Creator rules for you.

Here’s my personal take anyway. You shouldn’t use any non FN characters in your game such as collab skins (Marvel, DC, Star Wars, Mr. Beast, etc.) as they are not owned by Epic. It’s unclear if we can even use FN owned characters as a 3d model in our maps but using non-FN characters is a pretty clear IP issue.

Why are there tons of maps with obvious IP issues in thumbnails and in the actual game? Your guess is as good as mine. But unless something is done they will continue to pop up and be present even on the main discover page.

I do think it’s really cool when we start seeing maps with official collabs with other IP such as the new OnePiece/Netflix map and the MKBHD map.

1.15 Respect IP Ownership - The content you create, publish, or use cannot infringe or violate someone else’s rights, including their intellectual property rights (such as by infringing another’s copyright or trademark). You must own or have obtained the necessary rights to share and publish the content, and any such license must be broad enough to grant Epic a license consistent with the Fortnite EULA and UEFN Supplemental Terms.

3.1.6. When creating promotional materials for your island, you must only show Outfits or other items that are owned by Epic Games (or that you have express permission or rights to use). For example, don’t use Marvel or DC Outfits.

https://www.fortnite.com/news/fortnite-island-creator-rules

2 Likes