Exciting news for any Unreal Engine game developers that also enjoy playing What Remains Of Edith Finch. Recently Unreal Engine has expanded its free Epic Games content section with ten packs containing assets from the What Remains Of Edith Finch game.
I am a massive fan of What Remains Of Edith Finch. I was truly inspired when playing the game with just how detailed all the different rooms were. You could play the game several times over and each time notice something you did not before hiding somewhere in a room. It was just amazing how much time and effort was put into all the little meshes and items found thought out the game's environment.
To be able to use any of these assets you do need one of the latest versions of Unreal Engine itself version 4.25. While there might be work around’s and other ways to get these game assets into older versions. Adding them directly from Unreal Engine Vault where all assets you have purchased from the store won’t immediately show up for older versions of the game engine.
The ten packs we can get for free for use in Unreal Engine contain set items from various rooms and locations within What Remains Of Edith Finch game. From Molly’s room to the outdoor house grounds there is a lot of stuff. In total there is around four and a half gigs amounting to thousands of unique meshes and items.
What is extremely exciting about this is they are not just giving you the meshes in a blank overview map for viewing. They are providing entire environments from the game itself from what it looks like. So that you can see how they are used. Along with seeing how the lighting was set up, different map settings, and so on.
These environments do contain many thousands of shaders that take my system a few minutes to load up so I won’t be going over every one of them. I however will be popping into a couple to illustrate what it all looks like from the Unreal Game Engine itself when dealing with these maps.
What brings a game environment to life are all the little things that most players might not notice the first time around. They often just blend in but provide what overall is needed to bring things together. With so many thousands of meshes now free if an Unreal Engine game developer finds themselves needing a random item like 3d glasses props or red market they can now find it within these packs.
You also do get an overview map with each of these assets that have everything just placed out for viewing. This makes it quite easy to just take a look at a lot of objects all at once. They are in standard sets so you don’t have things like special lighting settings or other adjustments made to the scene to give something a certain look.
What is great here is most items were not shaved down when the art department was trying to meet certain on-screen targets. This means the bulk of these items can be used in different manners than they originally used for in the game. This is great as there is nothing more annoying than finding something perfect for some niche need and finding out ¾ of the item was chopped off or never finished as the players would never see that part.
Along with all of these meshes you do get the detailed texture files that come along with them. For those looking to customize these assets and make them a bit more different or fitting the situation, they want to use them in they could always export to several 3d art programs and make needed changes to them as long as BC4-BC5 or DXT1 depending on the format is supported.
For those not looking to leave Unreal Engine itself there are some material blueprints to play around with. These are built out for more basic things like curtains material. Unreal Engine itself has quite an advanced and detailed blueprint system for changing a lot of things regarding materials from color to things like ambient occlusion.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes the fun part of game development is being able to see how others approached problem-solving and going about doing something. It can also be quite fun to play around with assets from games we have played over the years in a more behind the scenes manner.
As far as these assets themselves they are free in the Unreal Engine store. They follow the standard Unreal Engine EULA like anything else from the store. This is always nice as you do not have to deal with an endless about of user agreements just the one. This however does limit them for use in Unreal Engine.
Other Posts:
Review | What Remains of Edith Finch
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from Unreal Engine 4. The asset packs themselves can be found in Epic Games content section of the Unreal Engine store.
