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Sketchfab Plus is now free as 3D content company joins Epic Games

Epic Games continues its mission to improve Unreal Engine by acquiring Sketchfab.

Ozzie Mejia

July 21, 2021 6:45 PM

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Epic Games has more than enough to power the Unreal Engine, but the company is not one to rest on its laurels. In an effort to help make the Unreal Engine an even stronger platform, Epic Games acquired the team at Sketchfab to strengthen its 3D, AR, and VR content.

For the uninitiated, Sketchfab is a content creation platform home to more than 4 million 3D assets, all of which are available to buy and edit. Epic will utilize the best of Sketchfab, while continuiing to allow the company to operate independently. Here's the announcement from the Epic Games website:

Sketchfab makes it easy to discover, edit, buy, and sell 3D content directly through their web-based service and is home to 4 million 3D assets. Their technology has integrations across every major 3D creation tool and publishing platform and is compatible across all major browsers and operating systems, on both desktop and mobile. By joining forces, Epic and Sketchfab will be able to make 3D, AR and VR content more accessible and grow the creator ecosystem, which are critical to an open and interconnected Metaverse.

Going forward we will continue to enable all of the integrations in place with Sketchfab’s technology, as well as ensure the company’s offerings will remain compatible with each of the different tools and platforms they support. This includes wholeheartedly supporting Unity and other engines. Sketchfab will continue to operate as an independently branded service while collaborating closely with the Unreal Engine team.

As part of our shared goal to make Sketchfab’s offerings more profitable to creators, we will be reducing Sketchfab’s store fees to 12% so that 3D creators will get even more value when using Sketchfab.

"Almost 10 years ago, we started Sketchfab to make 3D content accessible through the web," reads the post on the Sketchfab website. "We launched the first web-based 3D player on the market, and became one of the leading services for publishing and finding 3D content. Our community is now 5 million strong, and we are proud of what we have accomplished together. I would like to take this opportunity to thank our community, our customers, our partners, our investors and our team: we wouldn’t be here without all of you."

Epic Games most recently launched an early access version of Unreal Engine 5 earlier this year. In addition to Sketchfab, Epic also picked up Capturing Reality and ArtStation to help boost up Unreal Engine. The future of Unreal Engine looks exciting, so keep it on Shacknews as we report on whatever's next as it comes up.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?