[Super Beginner] Touchdesigner’s “UnrealEngine Plug-in Samples” Explained — set up

The time is come

The greatest news of the century has come for us Touchdesigner users.

It’s the announcement of the UnrealEngine plug-in!

Woohoo!
Oh, am I the only one who’s excited? lol

For those of you who couldn’t get over my enthusiasm, I’ll explain why miwa_maroon is so excited,

and have him explain the actual UE4 plugin samples!

What is UnrealEngine anyway?

UnrealEngine, a.k.a. UE4 (as of now), is a software that is mainly used to create games.

The famous “Fortnite” is also made with UnrealEngine.

It is a platform that can be used to create not only PlayStation games, but also smartphone games (such as Wii U) and AR/VR.

And it’s free! That’s insane!

Apparently, if you make a lot of money from a game, you have to pay royalties!

UnrealEngine’s greatest feature

Yes! This is important!

The biggest attraction of UnrealEngine

It’s that the graphics are so beautiful!

That’s what I’m talking about.

To put it more precisely.
It contains a lot of features to make it beautiful.
Seeing is believing, so let me borrow the official UnrealEngine reel

UnrealEngine official channel

The quality is amazing!

And the fact that this works in real time. 。。。。
I’m speechless.

Because of its beauty, it has recently been called a virtual production.

UnrealEngine youtube channel

and live perfomance industry

UnrealEngine youtube channel

There’s a movie that was made using UnrealEngine.
I think it was for the next Bio movie, but I’ll be called a liar if I say anything too uncertain.

Unreal Engine is used in a wide variety of applications due to its graphic quality and many features.

Many high quality free assets.

And for those who have never touched modeling or photogrammetry before, there are tons of free assets available!

Seriously, it’s a boon for weak people like miwa_maroon who have never used blender or houdini!

And it seems to be possible because the unrealengine company has acquired a company that specializes in 3Dmodel and 3Dscan.

I guess it’s important to have a good business strategy to provide a good service.

Unreal Engine Plug-in Samples

Let’s see what the Unreal Engine Plug-in Samples are all about, shall we?

set up Unreal Engine Plug-in Samples

Now that you know how awesome UnrealEngine is, let’s get into the UE4 plug-in samples.
Let’s go step by step and be gentle.

First, the setup.

Actually, it takes a little bit of work, but it’s nothing difficult.
That’s why we have prepared a video for you.

We’ll explain the important steps from scratch, so please take a look!

Video Description

Basically, I’m explaining it in a video, and I’m actually moving my hands, so I think that’s definitely easier to understand!

For those of you who don’t want to watch the video, here’s a very simple point explanation.
(If you don’t want to watch the video, here is a very simple point explanation.)

3 softwares

You need softwares absolutely!
— Touchdesigner(Latest version of 14360 as of August 2021)
— UnrealEngine 4.26(August 2021)
— VisualStudio 2019

By the way, UnrealEngine takes so much time to download.

In the meantime, I’m making a video so that you can watch it later.
Even then, there’s a chance I won’t be able to finish, so how about some muscle training? It feels good.

Bad news

UE4 plugin is not available for Non-commercial use at this stage.

Super badly news.
I’m hoping it will be available for mainstream UE4 users.
I’m scared that if someone from Derivative sees this, they’ll say, “Don’t be so cocky!
I can only thank you for developing Touchdesigner!
To put it mildly…
Love it!

Add the project from the Touchdesigner UE4 plugin github page as a sub module.
miwa_maroon does this with an application called Source tree,

but
You can also use git hub desktop
You can also use the command

git clone — recurse gitURL

It looks like I have to type this command, but I don’t know what I’m doing at all.
If you know anything about it, please let me know.

Get the Plug-in folder.

Download the folder as a zip file from the git hub page where the UE4 plugin is located.
Move it under the Plugins folder!
Sorry for the mess!

How to use Touch Engine in visual studio

The Touch Engine is a mechanism that allows tox to run in other applications. This will be explained in detail in the TouchEnigine componet section.

Let’s set it up in visual studio.

To avoid any misunderstandings, please watch the video for details!
You can’t just double-click on a cloned UE4 project file and open it…

Open an UE4 project

After following the above steps, you can of course
Click on the ue4 project file to open UnrealEngine

That’s it for the setup!

Next up.
Explaining UE4 operations
and
TouchEngine Component, which is the most important component in UE4.

If it didn’t work,

Actually, this UE4 Plugin is still in beta, so there may be some errors in unexpected places.
If so, you haven’t followed the official steps (you can find instructions on the git hub page)
or
bug

If you find a bug, it would be kind of you to post it on git hub issues~.

by the way, I found a bug that prevented the Coumpute shader from working properly, and it was fixed very quickly.

Well, let’s make it the best plugin together!
So that’s it!

See you next time!