DOWNLOAD / INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

General

The Live FX Unreal Live Link plugin connects Live FX with an Unreal scene. Live FX sends camera position- and rotation data as well as framerate, timecode, scene/take and record state information to the plugin. The plugin links to the (virtual) camera in the Unreal scene. The rendered image of the camera is captured by Live FX - either by a texture share on the GPU or through an SDI/NDI video IO stream. Live FX uses the captured image in e.g. an LED volume projection or green-screen composition.

The plug-in is available for various versions of Unreal Engine:

• Unreal 5.3 - Plugin version 14.0
• Unreal 5.2 - Plugin version 14.0
• Unreal 5.1 - Plugin version 14.0
• Unreal 5.0 - Plugin version 7.0
• Unreal 4.27 - Plugin version 7.0
• Unreal 4.26 - Plugin version 7.0

Note that the plugin is is no longer updated for Unreal versions before 5.1. Older versions still work for passing camera position and rotation but require more manual setup as they do not have all prerequisite elements baked in and cannot be used when packaging an Unreal project.

Installation and Activation

• download the correct version of the plugin from the links above.
• unzip the LiveLink folder that is inside the downloaded zip, and place it in the “..\yourUnRealProject\Plugins” sub-folder or your Unreal project.
• (re)start Unreal.
• activate the plug-in by adding a new Live Link Source. Open the Live Link panel from the Windows -> Virtual Production -> Live link menu. In the Live Link panel use the + Source to instantiate the Live FX Live Link. Make sure the Unreal Live Link has the same Port number set as the Live Link inside Live FX.

• tie the Live Link to the (cine) camera in the Unreal scene by adding a Live Link Controller.

• optionally you can also instantiate the Live FX Runtime Camera (blueprint) with the (cine) camera. This will route the (cine) camera output to the primary view port. This is very useful with the Texture Share option to capture images in Live FX from the Unreal scene.
• tie the Live Link Controller to the Live FX Live Link by setting the Subject Representation.

• after that the setup on the Unreal part is ready. All that is left to do is enabling the Unreal Live Link in Live FX, if not done so not already. Open the Live Link panel from the Live FX menu in the Player, select Unreal from the Live Link list and switch it On. Make sure you use the correct Ip and port number to connect to the Unreal system. If Unreal is running on the same system as Live FX, you can use [127.0.0.1]. Use the broadcast option if the data needs to go to multiple Unreal systems.

Packaging

• Packaging the Live FX Live Link plugin in C++ projects is supported. 
• If your game is a Blueprint project, you need to explicitly disable and then re-enable the Live FX Live Link plugin, as well as the related plugins: LiveLink, LiveLinkCamera, CameraCalibration, TextureShare, DMXProtocol, DMXEngine, DMXFixtures, DMXControlConsole.
• Alternatively to disabling and enabling plugins, you can convert a BP project to a C++ project by adding an empty C++ class to the BP project.
• Another alternative is to to use the Unreal project template for Virtual Production, as that has all the mentioned related plugins already included.

RELEASE HISTORY

Oct 17 '23, version 14

• Update on the Live FX Runtime Camera BP.
• Fix on 5.1 and 5.2 plugin builds to be able to package the UE scene with the plugin in.

Oct 9 '23, version 13

• Include Intermediate compilation to allow for re-packaging.
• Include addition dependencies to be automatically loaded with the plug-in: Texture share, Live Link Camera and DMX controllers.
• Included the LiveFX_RuntimeCamera blueprint (in the plug-in content folder) to link a camera to the main (viewport) output.