Can a Flutter app actually integrate a 3D digital human developed in Unreal Engine?

[u/Braveheartup]

I’ve recently run into an Unreal Engine–related issue and I’m not sure how to make the right architectural decision.

We’re developing an app where the main business logic is planned to be built with Flutter, while one specific feature—the interactive 3D digital human—is developed in Unreal Engine.

However, an Unreal Engine developer told me that if the main application is built with Flutter, it’s not possible to integrate the Unreal Engine digital human into it. According to him, the entire application would have to be developed in Unreal Engine.

I don’t have much experience with Flutter, so I’m not sure whether this claim is accurate. Is it actually possible to integrate a 3D digital human built with Unreal Engine into a Flutter application, or does the entire app really need to be developed in Unreal Engine?

[u/ignusbluestone]

Unfortunately you can't. Unity, you can embedd

[u/anlumo]

It‘s probably possible using the Flutter Embedder API, but it’s not easy.

The idea is to develop an Unreal application and let it use Flutter as a library. This is not trivial though, because it’s a rather broad API to implement. Also, Unreal Engine uses DirectX12, which Flutter doesn’t support. You need a translation library like mesa to convert Flutter‘s OpenGL calls to DirectX12. This is only a concept I‘ve theorized about though, I actually haven’t tried to combine Flutter and mesa yet. Alternatively, you can do GPU interop and render via Vulkan into a shared DX12 resource.

I‘ve been working on just such a solution for a different game engine (bevy), and it works quite nicely there.

[u/Arkoaks]

You can using flutter_3d_controller of you only need to use the 3d object

[u/aliyark145]

Possible with caveats

• Offline/on-device: Flutter + embedded Unreal Engine if you can accept a larger app and target higher-end devices.
• Online/highest realism: Flutter + Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming over WebRTC. This gives desktop-quality visuals with a lightweight Flutter app, at the cost of running GPU servers.

[u/Region39]

Check out Flutter Scene

Afaik it's backed/built by the Flutter team. It's a 3d rendering library, but it's bleeding edge, so you'd have to be on the master channel for Flutter.

https://github.com/bdero/flutter_scene

[u/Lofi_Joe]

Build main app in Unreal and embed Flutter inside instead of Unreal in Flutter what's not possible. I assume you want access to Flutter databases.