UE4.27 & UE5.0.3 - Switchboard Plugin, Missing Button from Toolbar?

General Feedback & Requests
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1

Hi all, I’m in the setup phases of doing some Virtual Production tests, and following along the Quick Start Guide for Switchboard here - Switchboard Quick Start for Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.0 Documentation

I’ve enabled the Switchboard plugin in the plugin manager/editor, and restarted the editor.

However, I’m unable to move on. After activating the plugin and restarting the editor, the Switchboard button/dropdown menu is supposed to be on the top toolbar, however on our machine, a Mac Studio running two fresh installs of UE5.0.3 and UE4.27, there’s no button/dropdown menu in either version of the editor.

I can’t move on to the next step to install Switchboard’s dependencies.

Is this plugin deprecated? Does it only support Windows, or is there a pre-requisite step I’m not seeing? Or is this a bug?

2

same issue. I have a couple of Macbooks and I cant find the switchboard button in the main toolbar

3

Update - After checking on a Windows machine, I do not think this is a Mac specific issue. The feature is still missing on a PC running Windows 10.

4

Hi I am having the same issue, furthermore if I try launch switchboard from the shortcut or through the prompt post the first install of dependencies. Switchboard never opens the console window. It does however appear as a python script in background processes in windows task manager.
I have tried reinstalling everything and I cannot get the switchboard to launch correctly.

The button reappears on the toolbar when i try reinstall through the editor without stopping the running process in the background, basicaly when the editor thinks that the packages aren’t installed. As soon as they are the switchboard icon disappears. Either way switchboard won’t open>

I am using UE 5.03 and windows 11 pro

5

Just to clarify on my previous post - the switchboard button is initially visible in the toolbar when the plugins are active. After I Launch switchboard for first time and am prompted to install of the dependencies it disappears, and will not launch a switchboard window.

Has their been a solve for this yet

6

I am also having this issue, I’ve tried every fix that appears on this forum to no avail, even completely reinstlaling epic games and Unreal Engine don’t seem to be fixing this issue, its very frustrating!!

Im also on UE 5.0.3 and Win 11 Home

7

Hi @Derpdacow1, and everyone, I have an update and some discoveries that may be helpful to you all.

Some discoveries I’ve made;

I believe Switchboard and ICVFX templates are Windows-only at this time.

If you have a Mac, you can help me verify this by attempting to download the official Epic Games ICVFX Template (which is now outdated and a Legacy template, more on that later) at this link;

This link SHOULD bootstrap launch the Epic Games Launcher and bring up the Marketplace page that would allow you to save the template into your Library. If it doesn’t let you add it, then it’s currently not available for your platform at this time. Mac users should also note that currently, UE does not have any preloaded ICVFX templates loaded in a freshly installed version of UE 4.27 or 5.0 releases, which also reinforces my understanding that it’s not available for Mac at this time.

UE 4.27.2 should be able to install Switchboard on Windows.

I was able to get a Windows 11 Home machine, running UE 4.27.2 machine working with Switchboard.

  • 4.27.2 was a fresh install, 5.0 was never installed on this machine. It’s possible you may need to set 4.27 as the default version of Unreal from inside the Epic Games Launcher for this to work, I’m not sure.
  • There might be some additional dependencies that need to be installed in order for this to work at all. Possibly a Python or Java library, but from my experience, I didn’t have to install anything.
    • I am also currently attempting to get it to run on a Windows 10 Home machine, also running UE 4.27.2, I’ll report back if this ends up working, but I can confirm it working in Windows 11 at least.

If I recall correctly, I believe I only checked UE5.0 with that Windows test, I may not have checked 4.27.

My working version of 4.27.2 also contains a Film/TV/Broadcast template with an ICVFX template preloaded. This is NOT the same as the Marketplace Legacy template in the link above – lots has changed between when that template was made and now, that even an acquaintance of mine that was operating ICVFX and LED walls a year ago was tripped up by the changes.

UE 5.0 does not currently support ICVFX workflows as of September 13th, 2022.

This may change in the future, but as of today, you must be running 4.27 (current build is 4.27.2).

From what I’m able to tell, this entire workflow is incredibly new so Epic is only focusing on Windows development of Switchboard at this time. UE5 also makes some considerable changes to the interface, and even how it handles toolbars, which may be the reason why Switchboard isn’t even an available option in 5.0.

This doesn’t mean that Macs won’t get it eventually, or that Macs are not usable in the ICVFX workflow, it just means Switchboard is not available as a plugin.

I believe Macs may be able to connect to a Multi-User session and therefore still be workstations that you can use in the ICVFX workflow, but Switchboard/nDisplay currently requires initiating/“hosting” said Multi-User session on a Windows PC.

Give 4.27.2 on Windows a try, see if you can progress with the Quick Start Guide.

8

Ill do a test here in a moment attempting to install 4.27.2 and installing the Switchboard plugin respectively for that engine version. Im curious if I can install the dependencies into the UE5 folder in the same path for the switchboard environment and get it working. It wont be a major loss if I have to switch to 4.27 since I’m mostly testing stuff right now but I have seen companies using UE5 with absolutely no hiccups, so I found it strange that so many people have issues. Thankyou so much for this trial !!

9

Got Switchboard working on Windows 10 running UE 4.27.2.

First time setup/launch on 4.27.2 successfully installed all the dependencies. It works as intended.

10

Confirm same issue on Windows 10 UE 5.2. The button is there until you run setup/launch then it’s gone.

11

According to the ICVFX template pages, Macs are not supported at this time, but I’m not sure if that’s related to the plugins disappearing from the toolbar. I know it’s been a while, but were you using a Mac or PC?