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Tutorial 5 – Building rdLODtools for Linux

rdLODtools works well with Linux. You can build the plugin in one of 3 ways:

A couple of small code changes:

The linux compiler doesn’t like some characters such as the °(degree) symbol. There are 4 instances of it spread over 2 files, they will need to be replaced with something like “*”.

These can be found in:

rdLODtools/Source/Private/rdLOD_UIBillboard.cpp – lines 319 and 350
rdLODtools/Source/Private/rdLOD_UIPlanar.cpp – lines 306 and 337

I’ve updated them in the source base so this shouldn’t be an issue for versions after 1.24.

Option 1: Installing the plugin to the UE4 Engine Folder

The first way to build rdLODtools for Linux is to copy the plugin into the Engine/Plugins/Marketplace folder just like windows, and then “make” the Engine again – it will skip all built files and just build the plugin and any other fresh sources.

Option 2: Installing the plugin to your Project Folder

The second way is to copy the rdLODtools plugin into a folder called “Plugins” in your project folder (the same folder that contains the Content folder) and then make the project – note that this requires the project to be c++.

Option 3: Using the UAT AutomationTool

If you copied the plugin from a windows project and get an error when building in one of the other 2 ways saying the plugin was “built with another version”, you can rebuild the project files for it by following these instructions:

  1. Copy the plugin to a temporary place such as your home folder, then create a folder for the compiled plugin (do not put either of these folders in the source folder)
  2. Open a terminal and navigate to the Engine/Build/BatchFiles folder in the UE Source Folder.
  3. Execute the following command: ./RunUAT.sh BuildPlugin -Plugin=”<folder containing plugin>/rdLODtools.uplugin” -Package=”<dest folder>/”
  4. This can take some time, but when finished the dest folder should contain the build linux rdLODtools plugin – just copy that to either your project or the Engine/Plugins/Marketplace/ folder.