Unreal Prerequisites#

To work on Unreal Engine projects for the ACE pipeline, follow these setup steps:

1. Install Unreal Engine#

The template and plugins are built for Unreal Engine 5.3 and won’t work with a newer/older version.

Windows#

  1. Download Unreal Engine 5.3 from here and follow the installation process. Make sure to open the “Options” and enable Linux as a target platform:

    ../_images/unreal_target_platform_linux.png

    Note

    If you already installed Unreal Engine 5.3 without Linux as a target platform, you can still do so via “Options” from the dropdown:

    ../_images/unreal-install-options.png

  2. Download the Visual Studio Community installer from here. Do not run the executable directly! It defaults to the latest version, but according to Epic Games’ recommendation a previous version is required for Unreal Engine 5.3.

    Run the downloaded installer via command line interface to get the correct version:

    visualstudiosetup.exe --channelUri https://aka.ms/vs/17/release.LTSC.17.6/channel

    Make sure to install the “Game development with C++” workload:

    ../_images/vs_for_gamedev.png

Ubuntu#

  1. Make sure you are on Ubuntu 22. Ubuntu 24.04 will allow you to install and run Unreal 5.3, but you won’t be able to build/package the project.

  2. Download Unreal Engine 5.3 from the Linux downloads section. You will have to click Show earlier releases a few times.

  3. Unzip the downloaded file to your preferred install location (e.g. ~/UE5.3.2).

  4. If you intend to use MetaHumans, make sure you download the latest Bridge plugin for Unreal Engine 5.3 as well. You install it by unzipping it to the Plugins folder of the Unreal Engine (e.g. ~/UE5.3.2/Engine/Plugins)

3. Install NGC#

Get the latest NGC CLI and make sure you have a Personal NGC API Key.

4. Install ACE Plugin#

Download the NVIDIA ACE Unreal Engine Plugin from the NVIDIA developer website.

Unzip the downloaded plugin and place it in a folder named “Marketplace” in the Plugin folder of the Unreal Engine (e.g. C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.3\Engine\Plugins\Marketplace). Create this folder, if it doesn’t exist.

Note

Beware of nested folders when unzipping:

../_images/plugin_unzip_issue_engine.png

The plugin is written and built for Unreal Engine 5.3. If you are using a different version, you will need to build the plugin yourself. There is also a chance, that some interfaces changed, so you might need to adapt the code to the new interfaces.

# Windows example for compiling the plugin for Unreal 5.5
"C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.5\Engine\Build\BatchFiles\RunUAT.bat" -NoP4 BuildPlugin -Plugin="C:\UnrealPlugins\src\aceunrealplugin-ue5.3-2.3.0\NV_ACE_Reference.uplugin" -Package="C:\UnrealPlugins\dist\aceunrealplugin-ue5.3-2.3.0_UE5.5" -TargetPlatforms=Win64

# Linux example for compiling the plugin for Unreal 5.5
/home/ue4/UnrealEngine/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/RunUAT.sh -NoP4 BuildPlugin -Plugin="/tmp/UnrealPlugins/src/aceunrealplugin-ue5.3-2.3.0/NV_ACE_Reference.uplugin" -Package="/tmp/UnrealPlugins/dist/aceunrealplugin-ue5.3-2.3.0_UE5.5" -TargetPlatforms=Linux
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