Installing Unreal Engine Plugins from GitHub or Source Code

Whether you are just getting started with the Unreal Engine or have been using it for years, Plugins are a great way to enhance your creation and reduce the development time across a project. Although many useful plugins come preinstalled on your system, your project may require more bespoke and advanced tools that aren’t included by default and need to be installed from a 3rd party host like GitHub.

How to install 3rd Party Plugins from GitHub or Source Code

1. To get started make sure you have the Unreal Engine installed along with Visual Studio. Make sure that you also have Visual Studio set up for game development with C++.
2. Create a project within the Unreal Engine editor, then save and close the program.
3. Locate the directory of your newly created project. For example C:\Users\User\Unreal Engine\MyProject
4. Create a “Plugins” folder and place the source code into the new directory.  For example C:\Users\User\Unreal Engine\MyProject\Plugins
5. Navigate back to the top level of your project and right-click on the .uproject file. Select Generate Visual Studio Project.
6. Reopen the project with the Unreal Engine editor and Navigate to Edit>Plugins and enable (if already enabled don’t worry) your new plugin. 

From there the engine should restart and you should have your newly installed plugin ready to use. If you are interested in an example of a plugin your might want to install from a 3rd party, check out the Dolby.io Millicast WebRTC plugin for creating WebRTC pixel streams.