Setting the AYON Unreal Plugin Path

The AYON Unreal Plugin can be set up in a few different ways, depending on your studio's workflow and deployment needs. Follow the steps below to configure the plugin path:

1. Plugin Availability

• The plugin is available on the Unreal Marketplace, allowing artists to download and install it directly.

• Alternatively, the plugin is included with the AYON Unreal Addon for convenience.

2. Studio-Wide Deployment

Admins can configure the plugin path for a studio-wide setup to ensure consistency across all users. Use the following environment variables:

• AYON_UNREAL_PLUGIN: Set this path to the source code of the plugin.

• AYON_BUILT_UNREAL_PLUGIN: Set this path to the compiled version of the plugin.

3. Automatic Plugin Setup

If no usable plugin is found, AYON will attempt to build the plugin included within the AYON Unreal Addon. This ensures that the plugin is always available when launching Unreal App.​

Deadline Support​

AYON Unreal integration supports render on farm via our custom Unreal Deadline plugin.

Manually installing Qt bindings​

It might happen that automatic installation of th Qt bindings into Unreal fails. It that case here are manual steps that can be taken to amend it:

Option A (preferred)​

Using Unreal's Python interpreter (located on a path like Engine\Binaries\ThirdParty\Python3\Win64 depending on the platform):

python -m pip install pyside6

Option B (unsupported)​

You can run following python code either directly from Unreal or using Unreal's Python interpreter:

import pip
pip.main(["install", "pyside6"])

Be aware that calling pip like so is deprecated by pip itself and might not work in newer versions.

Set UAsset Product Publish Template

Currently, publishing the uasset product uses the default publish template, which changes the filenames of uasset and umap for the published product. This causes errors when loading the uasset product via the AYON Loader.

To fix this, you need to set a custom publish template for the uasset product to preserve its original filename during publishing.

Setting the UAsset product publish template involves two steps:

1. Adding an anatomy publish template to your project anatomy settings (a+a).

2. Assigning the anatomy publish template to the uasset product.

Unfortunately, it's challenging to ship AYON with this fix because we cannot guarantee that users have applied the publish template to their project anatomy and assigned it to the uasset product.

1. Add Anatomy Publish Template

If the unrealuasset publish template is not available, you can create one by following these steps:

1. Open Project Anatomy Settings (shortcut: A + A).

2. Choose your project.

3. Locate the publish template settings at: ayon+anatomy://{project_name}/templates/publish.

4. Add a new publish template by clicking the + icon.

5. Fill in the details for the unrealuasset publish template or copy and paste the following template:

   {
     "name": "unrealuasset",
     "directory": "{root[work]}/{project[name]}/{hierarchy}/{folder[name]}/publish/{product[type]}/{product[name]}/{@version}",
     "file": "{originalBasename}.{ext}"
   }

6. Save your changes.

2. Assign Anatomy Publish Template to uasset Product

To assign the publish template to the uasset product, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Core Addon Settings under ayon+settings://core/tools/publish/template_name_profiles.

2. Add a new profile for uasset by clicking the + button (if one does not already exist).

3. Enter the publish template name you created earlier, e.g., unrealuasset.