Engine integration

Unreal Engine integration

Use the OpenVolumetric runtime and authoring plug-in in Unreal Engine 5, tested with version 5.8.

Plug-in modules

  • OpenVolumetricRuntime provides UOpenVolumetricComponent to C++ and Blueprints.
  • OpenVolumetricAuthoring adds the Editor encoder.
  • OpenVolumetricSDK supplies staged engine-neutral headers and native libraries.

Runtime setup

  1. Enable the OpenVolumetric plug-in and restart the Editor if requested.
  2. Add an Actor to the level.
  3. Add an Open Volumetric Component.
  4. Set Source File or Source URL.
  5. Enable Play on Open and Loop as needed.
  6. Enter Play in Editor.

For adaptive input, choose manifest.json, enable Use Adaptive Manifest, and select Auto, Low, or High.

The component creates and owns its dynamic mesh, transient texture, unlit material instance, procedural sound wave, and audio component. Blueprint operations include Open, Play, Pause, Seek, and Close.

Developer controls

Enable Developer Controls, click the game viewport, and use:

Key Action
K Play or pause; restart from zero at the end
J Seek backward
L Seek forward
O Toggle looping
I Show or hide the panel
P Force low/high quality during adaptive testing

The seek interval is configurable. Disable developer controls in release-facing applications.

Rendering and audio

The supplied material is unlit and two-sided. Shadows, emissive light contribution, and dynamic indirect lighting are disabled for the volumetric mesh.

Geometry-centroid spatial audio moves the procedural audio component with the performance. Unreal’s configured spatializer performs the actual spatial rendering.

Authoring

Open Tools > OpenVolumetric Encoder and use the same input, preset, fragmentation, geometry-compression, and adaptive-package options described in Authoring.

SDK requirement

The plug-in consumes a staged native SDK rather than including the monorepo source or a CMake build directory. Generate Source/ThirdParty/OpenVolumetricSDK, or set OPENVOLUMETRIC_UNREAL_SDK to an equivalent external staging directory. See Building.

Validation status

Unreal Engine 5 Editor runtime and authoring have been tested and validated on Windows and macOS using Unreal Engine 5.8. Adaptive local and HTTP playback, seeking, pause/resume, looping, synchronization, network recovery, and spatial audio have been exercised. Additional engine releases, packaged-application configurations, and Unreal Android/Quest remain areas for broader validation.