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have a Mac, you can help me verify this by attempting to download the official Epic Games ICVFX Template (which is now outdated and a Legacy template, more on that later) at this link;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