Open Virtual Film Project
UE4 Project Setup
In this section you will find various guides on how to setup unreal for use with the Open Virtual Film Project standard. This page covers inital setup of installing the engine.
Installing UE4 for the first time
Go to https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/get-now and select the creator's license download.
Once downloaded run the installer. The launcher that is installed by this process is quite small so it is fine to leave it on your main hard drive.
Once the launcher is installed, you need to install a version of the UE4 engine. Open the launcher and on the left side will be an Unreal engine tab. Once you are in that tab, select the library tab across the top and click the yellow plus next to Engine versions.
A grey box will show up with a version number in it. Select the version number that your project is using (for instance, the Open Virtual Film Project uses 4.25 and will not work with earlier version numbers). With a version number selected, click the install button and select a location to install your engine to. This will be a larger download, so if you have a small OS hard drive it is a good idea to install these files to a seperate drive. You will get a slight performance increase from putting the engine onto an SSD, but not nearly as much as putting your projects onto an SSD.
Opening a Project File
With your engine installed, you need a project file. If you download the Open Virtual Film Project from the downloads page, you will be able to navigate to that folder and double click the .uproject.
If you are on a show with an existing project file, ask whomever is coordinating that how to access those files. You might be using source control for that process.
If you plan to start a project from scratch, go here.
Saving your Hard Drive: Marketplace Data Cache
When you download assets from the UE4 marketplace (tutorial), a second copy will be stored locally on your computer. If you are having trouble with disk space you can change the download location of those files by navegating to your library once more and clicking the settings button in the bottom left.
Scroll down and click the edit vault data cache button.
Select a new location for your vault cache. If you have a computer with an SSD and a slower spinning disk drive, this cache is a great canidate for the spinning disk drive since you will only interact with it when you need to add marketplace content to your project. If you are very crampt for space, next to the add to project icon for each marketplace item in your library is a dropdown where you can delete local content. If you have already installed that data into a project you do not need both copies. More on marketplace content here
Saving Disk Space: Data Cache Locations
When you are working in UE4 the program automatically creates files to speed up load times called the Data Cache. If you are noticing that your hard drive is filling up with data mysteriously you might want to check your data cache locations by opening your project, edit - editor preference and searching cache. If you are working alone or not using a shared data cache changing the derived data location to a different location can help.
Additionally, if you are working on a collaborative project and have a data server you are syncing to, everyone can benefit from something called a shared data cache. More info: US/Engine/Basics/DerivedDataCache/index.html
