is a quick walk-through of the setup for all of the GameWorks UE4 builds - Hopefully helps some people.
- Download and install Visual Studio Community 2013 (as far as i know other versions don’t work with UE4 builds at time) : https://www.visualstudio/en-us/news/vs2013-community-vs.aspx
- Create a GitHub account and make sure you’re logged into it or you will get a 404 page with the links below
- Link it to your Epic Games account (the same account you use for forum), is a quick write-up on how to do that - https://wiki.unrealengine/GitHub_Setup
- Find and download the branch you want to use, all GameWorks branches are located at link:
- On the top left of that page you will see a dropdown next to the UnrealEngine / + breadcrumb, in dropdown you can select which branch you want (HairWorks, VXGI, etc.)
- Select the branch you want from the dropdown
- On the right side of the page for that branch click the Download ZIP button, the file will download
- Once the file is downloaded extract it to the folder in which you would like the files to reside
- Once extracted run Setup.bat, if prompted to overwrite files in the DOS console type N for no. You may need to give the operation permission to run (at least i did in Window 7) so keep an eye out for the little pulsing Allow shield icon in the taskbar if the process pauses and you don’t get a popup. process can take a while depending on your system specs.
- Once the process is finished double click the GenerateProjectFiles.bat. Same steps as above but the process only takes a few seconds.
- Once that process is done double click the new Visual Studio file that was created, will open Visual Studio Community 2013. If it gives you a popup about unauthenticated files or something like that just click ok.
- With Visual Studio open, on the right select UE4 on the top of the tree, right click and select Build. process takes the longest, usually 20-40 minutes. It will tell you once it’s complete with 1 successful and 0 failed message)
- Once that build is done right click the ShaderCompilerWorker in the same tree that you built UE4 from in Visual Studio and click Build. process only takes a few seconds.
- Once that’s all done you can now launch the editor. The first time you launch the editor do it from Visual Studio by selecting UE4 in the right side tree and pressing F5
- After the initial launch you can just launch the editor normally from the Engine > Binaries > Win64 > UE4Editor.exe file
- When you first start the editor it will most likely show you a project select screen, when you double click the example project it may ask you if you want to convert the project, select Skip Conversion.