You want a desk and chairs in a room built from white boxes. Ready-made material lets you try the room's atmosphere before modeling furniture from scratch. The models, images, and audio used in a game are called assets .
When you actually go to use one, though, the first step stalls on "where do I look", "is free really fine", and "how do I get it into my project". UE5's official store Fab is the entry point covering searching, checking, and importing. This article goes from finding a free asset on Fab through importing it and moving it safely from a test project to production, decorating a bare room along the way.
What You'll Learn
- What Fab is (the unified store for the old Marketplace, Quixel, and Sketchfab)
- Finding free assets by filtering price and UE-ready formats
- How to read a license and what to watch for in commercial use
- The flow of adding from the "Library" in the Epic Games Launcher
- Moving assets from a test project to production with Migrate
- Hands-on: place a prop and check size, collision, and appearance
What Fab is
Fab is Epic Games' store for digital assets. It inherits the sales features of the UE Marketplace and others, handling models and material usable in other authoring tools alongside UE-ready assets.
- The old UE Marketplace : the store that handled UE assets and plugins.
- Quixel Megascans : a library of photorealistic 3D-scanned material. Photoreal rocks, ground, plants, and so on.
- Sketchfab Store : Sketchfab's 3D model sales feature. Sketchfab in the diagram refers to that sales feature.
Products obtained on the old UE Marketplace are available from the Launcher's Fab Library . What appears in the web My Library is products published on Fab. Acquisition terms on the old store are not all identical, so for past purchases you can check the official migration FAQ.
Finding free assets
For the first exercise, find one non-moving prop such as a chair or shelf. Such placeable objects are called props . Log in to Fab with your Epic account and filter by price "Free" and format "Unreal Engine". Products offering only generic model formats may require separate import steps and material setup for UE.
Free assets broadly come in these kinds.
- Products published as free : models and materials whose creators set the price to free.
- Temporarily free products : ones you can add to your library by completing acquisition during a period. Check the deadline and the price at acquisition.
- Free Megascans offerings : this does not mean all of Megascans is always free. Confirm the price on the current product page and choose. Keep past blanket free campaigns separate from the terms for acquiring something now.
For instance, the blanket free campaign at Fab's launch was announced as running through the end of 2024. Do not mistake older material's "free" for the current price.
Search examples are chair and furniture . On the product page, confirm the price is free, the UE version support, and the file size. Product names in the diagram illustrate searching and do not indicate actual distribution.
Reading the license
Even when free, always confirm the terms of use (the license) . "Free" does not mean "usable for anything".
First look at the license type. The conditions you must observe differ between a Fab Standard License and CC BY .
- Separate use in a work from distributing the material itself : the Standard License permits commercial distribution of a work incorporating the material. It does not permit reselling or redistributing the material by itself.
- Confirm the tier at acquisition : the Standard License's Personal and Professional are price tiers. The scope of use rights is the same for both, but confirm which tier you may choose against the conditions at acquisition.
- Confirm attribution and other conditions : CC BY 4.0 requires appropriate credit, a link to the license, and indication of changes. Do not assume the same conditions as the Standard License; read the terms linked from the product.
This explanation points to where to check. In practice, confirm the terms applying to the product and note the author name, product URL, acquisition date, and license so you can review before release. Check the details in Fab's license guide and on the product page.
Adding to your project
Confirm price and terms on the product page and complete acquisition with "Add to My Library" or similar. Adding to your library registers the product to your account; it is not inside a UE project yet. Next you download it into where you will use it.
- Add from the Launcher : log in with the same Epic account and find the product in the Fab Library. For a UE-ready asset pack, choose the destination with "Add to Project".
- Add from UE's Fab window : open it with "Window → Fab". If you cannot find it, check whether Fab is enabled under "Edit → Plugins". Available operations differ by product format (see Epic's official Fab window documentation).
Products offering only "Create Project" are whole projects such as samples. "Install Plugin" is for plugins that add features. Not every product lets you freely choose between the two buttons. The diagram organizes the representative paths.
Here we choose a UE-ready furniture and prop pack where "Add to Project" is available. After it finishes, confirm the pack's folder appears in UE's Content Browser and you can open a model. Per-format steps are also covered in the official Fab in Launcher guide.
Moving to another project with Migrate
Migrate copies the assets you select, plus the material they use, into another project. A chair's mesh is its solid form, its material is how the surface looks, and textures are images used for color and pattern. Displaying the chair with the same look needs not only the shape but the materials and images it uses.
Right-click the asset in the Content Browser and choose "Asset Actions → Migrate". The list shown is what will be copied, including the necessary dependent assets . Review it and select the destination's Content folder itself . If overwriting same-named files comes up, confirm it is fine to replace work in the destination before proceeding. Epic's official migration steps also cover this flow.
Migrate is not a tool that automatically resolves UE version differences. To use older material in a newer version, try it in a duplicated test project. For products depending on plugins or code, also confirm supported versions and required features (see the UE version upgrade steps).
Hands-On: dress up a bare room
Let's put chairs and a shelf in a corner of the Third Person template. Start with one prop and check not just its appearance but its size and collision. Once comfortable, the same steps add more furniture.
What we build is the flow of checking a free prop pack in a test project and Migrating only what we use into production, arranging furniture in a room .
The diagram shows the finished result with more furniture. What moves into production is the chosen furniture and the material that furniture uses. Selecting a whole sample level also pulls in the many assets placed there, so start by selecting the meshes you use individually.
Steps
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1. Prepare a test project | Create a Third Person practice project on the same UE version as production |
| 2. Add a prop pack | Complete acquisition on Fab and "Add to Project" into the test project from the Launcher's Fab Library |
| 3. Place one and try it | Drag a mesh from the Content Browser into the level near the character. Check the five items below |
| 4. Move the chosen mesh | Select the mesh in the test project and choose "Asset Actions → Migrate". Check the list contains the needed material and specify production's Content folder |
| 5. Confirm in production | Place the mesh in the production project, confirm it looks, sizes, and collides the same, and save the level |
What to confirm
Check these five items in both the test project and production. Collision is the hit volume. Even when the chair is visible on screen, the character walks through it without collision.
| What to check | How to try it |
|---|---|
| Size (scale) | Place it beside the character and compare whether seat and desk heights match your intent |
| Collision | Approach in "Play" and confirm you neither pass through nor stop earlier than it looks |
| Appearance | See whether colors and patterns correspond to the original sample. Different lighting changes the impression |
| Dependent assets | Check the mesh's material fields and Migrate's list for the required materials and images |
| Size on disk | Confirm it does not include many large images. Even a few props can have large dependencies |
If you need to build collision, continue to the Simple Collision article. Stop "Play" before editing shape or position.
Isolating problems when it does not work.
- It looks different : do not decide the cause from color alone; check the material assignment, required images, and lighting. The first run can also take time preparing rendering (shader compilation). If the log names a missing file, match that name against what you migrated.
- The project grew : see whether you moved the whole pack or a sample level, and whether dependent images are large. Size and runtime heaviness are separate, so if the screen runs slow, check with how to investigate performance.
- You cannot open the asset : confirm supported versions, required plugins, and the product format. Redoing Migrate does not necessarily fix it.
Two points matter.
- Choose in the test project, then move to production : it reduces importing material you do not use and separates where problems occur.
- Open and confirm in the destination too : do not stop at Migrate completing; confirm placement and Play. Organizing afterwards continues in the asset management article.
Bonus: good to know up front
Replacing greyboxes. Blocking out space roughly first (greyboxing with Modeling Mode) and swapping in Fab assets afterwards moves level building along faster. "Shape first, look later" is the standard order.
Borrowing humanoid motion. Moving animation onto a character with a different skeleton needs mapping adjustments. Animation retargeting covers that mechanism and procedure.
Decide how to manage large assets before adding them. Using Git means checking Git LFS setup before recording large material. LFS is not a mechanism that compresses files, so you also need storage on the hosting side.
Summary
Go from acquiring an asset to production use in this flow.
| Stage | What to do | Tool |
|---|---|---|
| Find | Locate material with the free filter | Fab (free filter, Megascans) |
| Check | Read the format and version support, price, and terms | The product page and the applicable license |
| Import | Add to a test project | The Launcher's "Library" / the Fab plugin |
| Move | Move only what you use to production | Migrate (moves dependencies along) |
Once acquired, place one prop in the test project first. If it looks usable, move it to production with the required material and confirm it works the same there.
Even placing one chair makes room size and walkway width easier to think about. While improving the look, also test whether the character can walk around it.
Further Reading
- Asset management best practices — organizing and naming the assets you import
- Greyboxing with Modeling Mode — build shape first and swap in assets later
- Animation retargeting — using humanoid assets on your own character
- Project management with Git LFS — handling large assets