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Epic Games introduced Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview 1 at the annual State of Unreal event during the Game Developers Conference.
The event featured a multitude of visually stunning announcements, showcasing the latest advancements in Unreal Engine technology and innovative collaborations within the gaming industry.
It has been a year since Epic Games debuted Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and Creator Economy 2.0 at GDC 2023. This marks Epic’s approach to professional and user-generated content. Since its launch, creators have published over 80,000 UEFN islands, leading to $320 million in payouts to creators and attracting over 130 million players.
“We expanded the functionality on the economy and simplified the publishing process to create a professional community within an ecosystem,” said Sax Persson, executive vice president at Epic Games.
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Amy Hennig of Skydance unveiled Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra at the Epic Games event during the Game Developers Conference.
The game trailer showcased realistic imagery with impressive human face animations and cinematic scenes, creating an immersive experience for players.
One of the new features for creators is the ability to generate their own battle royale games within UEFN (Fortnite Creative). Epic Games plans to ship the first season of Battle Royale entirely developed in UEFN by the end of 2025.
According to Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games, this move aims to empower creators to develop high-quality, imaginative, and visually stunning games within the ecosystem.
Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview 1 brought significant updates, such as the integration of MetaHumans into UEFN and an expanded collaboration with Lego Group to incorporate Lego elements into Fortnite Creative.
Additionally, Epic Games announced that two out of three Fortnite players engage with user-generated content weekly, and over 70% participate monthly, averaging six islands per week.
Lego Fortnite, covering 95 square kilometers, supports cross-platform gameplay and symbolizes the convergence of digital and physical realms within the Lego brand.
Unreal Engine 5.4 is scheduled for a full release in late April, positioning itself for competition with Unity 6, set to debut in preview in May.
Dana Cowley of Epic previewed upcoming games while showcasing the platform’s ability to create immersive experiences through dynamic rendering performance and animation capabilities.
Motion Matching
Kim Libreri announced the introduction of Motion Matching, a feature enhancing character animation efficiency, exemplified by a parkour runner’s realistic motion in a game demo.
Later this year, Epic will release a learning project with over 500 triple-A animations created from motion capture data, aimed at simplifying the animation process in game development.
Developers can now leverage Motion Matching to achieve responsive, realistic animations without the complexity of traditional state transitions.
