Earlier today at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Epic Games announced the upcoming launch of Fab, a new marketplace that will give all digital content creators a single destination to discover, share, buy and sell digital assets. Our mission is to inspire and enable the next generation of creators to build the emerging metaverse together. Sketchfab and its community of creators will be integral to the realization of Fab, and we will be joined on Fab by the ArtStation Marketplace, Unreal Engine Marketplace, Quixel, and all of their talented communities. We are dropping the Sketch and going all in on Fab.
For more than a decade, we’ve added new features and capabilities to make it easier for anyone to view and share their 3D work. We’ve built on our 3D viewer and embed capabilities to allow creators to access Sketchfab via their favorite apps, and to upload directly to Sketchfab from their preferred creation tools. We also introduced model downloads that leveraged Creative Commons licenses and expanded our community’s economic opportunities by launching the Sketchfab Store with its royalty-free licenses. When we started Sketchfab, our goal was to develop a universal tool that empowered 3D creators to easily publish and share their work in all dimensions—this same vision and focus on product innovation will continue to drive our efforts as part of Fab.
Launching later this year, Fab will be the natural evolution of Epic’s offerings for all 3D content creators, with Sketchfab serving as the foundational pillar for this unified marketplace and content hub. As Fab develops, it will have the same 3D viewing, editing, and sharing capabilities as Sketchfab. It will host the same vibrant community of diverse and talented artists, brands, scholars, and more—and it will be a place where everyone from individual creators to large brands can share their work. Sellers on Fab will be able to reach an even bigger audience and they’ll continue to earn the same 88% revenue share just as they do today on the Sketchfab Store. And Fab will eventually offer the same opportunities for digital asset management and team-based collaboration that Sketchfab does.
And we are building this for all creators and content types. Fab.com will support the most popular game engines and metaverse platforms (not just Unreal Engine and Fortnite), it will provide seamless integrations with digital content creation tools, improved search and discovery, and the ability to inspect and check the game-readiness of an asset. On top of all that, buyers and sellers will have expanded payment options and a more extensive range of free and paid license types to choose from.
What’s next?
Right now, you can access the Alpha version of Fab, which is available as a plugin within Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). The current selection of assets is curated specifically for use in UEFN, but as Fab develops it will be opened up to creators to self-publish their work.
To learn more about Fab, head over to Fab.com.
When Fab launches as a standalone service later this year, we will begin transitioning our community and their 3D models over to it. Our team of talented and committed developers, designers, account managers, and community managers—many of whom have been a part of Sketchfab’s team since the early days—will be here to help make the process as smooth as possible for everyone. It’s important to us that all of our community members feel as at home on Fab as they have on Sketchfab.
We’re sure that you have lots of questions. We’ve done our best to answer them in this FAQ, but some details have yet to be finalized. Stay tuned for more information as we get closer to Fab’s launch date.
Thanks, as always, for being a member of the Sketchfab community.
About the author
Alban Denoyel
Co-founder and CEO of Sketchfab.
