Installing InstaLOD for Unreal Engine

About this document

Installing InstaLOD for Unreal Engine is a quick and easy process that can be completed in less than five minutes. For more information on InstaLOD for Unreal Engine please navigate to the full Getting Started guide.

Prerequisites

InstaLOD for Unreal Engine is supported by the latest release version on both Windows PC and macOS.
InstaLOD has been built on Windows 10 using Visual Studio 2015. If you are using an earlier version of Windows, the installation of the Visual Studio 2015 redistributables is required.

If you are not using C++ in your Unreal Engine project you will have to create an empty C++ class inside Unreal Engine first.
To create an empty C++ class inside Unreal Engine, open your project and click the green Add New button inside the Content Browser and select New C++ Class. Next Unreal Engine will prompt you to select a parent class, select the None or Empty to proceed.
InstaLOD for Unreal Engine ships with source code so this step is required in order for Unreal Engine to compile and use the InstaLOD plugin.

Installing InstaLOD for Unreal Engine

To install InstaLOD for Unreal Engine, download the latest version of InstaLOD for Unreal Engine from your InstaLOD Cloud account. Copy the InstaLODMeshReduction folder to your project’s Plugins folder.
If you cannot find the Plugins folder in the root of your Unreal Engine project simply create it using either Windows Explorer or macOS Finder.
Finally, right-click on your project file projectname.uproject and depending on your operating system select either Generate Xcode project (MacOS) or Generate Visual Studio project files (Windows).
The next time you will open your Unreal Engine project the InstaLOD plugin will be compiled.

If you are not using a custom fork of Unreal Engine, it is recommended to install InstaLOD to your project’s plugins folder, not into the engine’s plugins folder.

If you are using an older version of Unreal Engine please reach out to [e-mail] who will provide you with an older build. 

Installing InstaLOD for Unreal Engine 4.17

Due to a bug in Unreal Engine 4.17 a prompt appears when starting the engine for the first time after installing InstaLOD for Unreal Engine.
The prompt asks the user to disable the plugin due to incompatibilities. This is not correct and the dialog is the result of a bug within the engine. To proceed, simply click ‘No’ when asked to disable the InstaLODMeshReduction plugin.
More information on bug UE-49007 is available here.

Set InstaLOD as the default mesh reduction plugin

Users of Unreal Engine 4.14 and later must manually set the InstaLODMeshReduction plugin to be used for optimization.
In Unreal Engine 4, navigate to Edit -> Project Settings..., scroll down until the Editor category becomes fully visible, select Mesh Simplification and set it to 'InstaLODMeshReduction'.

Activate InstaLOD License

If your machine has already been authorized for InstaLOD you can start using InstaLOD for Unreal Engine without further actions.
If your machine has not yet been authorized, you will be required to enter your license information in the dialog box to authorize your workstation.

Please refer to the InstaLOD Pipeline documentation for an overview of all features.