Building ZED Live Link

In the Getting Started section, we explained how to animate an avatar on Unreal using the pre-compiled ZED Live Link sample executable.

A pre-built ZEDLiveLink sender for the current SDK version is located in zed-livelink-fusion (or mono)/Releases/your system/.

However, you might prefer to directly manipulate the ZED Live Link sample code and make some modifications to it. To do so, you must compile the ZED Live Link sample from source.

To compile the tool from source, you will require a source build of Unreal Engine.

Download the Engine #

To gain access to the UE engine code, please follow the steps below:

  1. Create an account at GitHub: Sign up
  2. Create an account at Epic Games: Sign up
  3. Log in to your Epic Games account and associate your GitHub account in the settings by entering your username into the GitHub account field.
  4. Log in to your GitHub account and accept the Epic team invitation* (Can take a few seconds to appear).
  5. Download or clone the UE5 engine code.

The link above will result in a 404 error if your GitHub account is not linked to an Epic Game one. Make sure to follow all the instructions above.

*If the invitation isn’t sent, clicking on the following link seems to trigger it: Unreal Group.

Build for Windows #

  1. Inside the Engine root directory, run Setup.bat. This will check all the project dependencies and update them as needed.
  2. Clone the ZED Live Link repository inside of <Engine Install Folder>\Engine\Source\Programs\.
  3. Run GenerateProjectFiles.bat in the Unreal Engine root directory to create project files for the Engine.
  4. Load the project into Visual Studio by double-clicking on the UE5.sln file, in the Unreal Engine root directory, then right click on the ZEDLiveLink target and select Build.
  • You will find the ZEDLiveLink target (and its counterpart ZEDLiveLinkFusion) under Solution UE5/Programs/LiveLink/ in the Solution Explorer.
  1. The binaries will be placed in <Engine Install Folder>\Engine\Binaries\Win64\ZEDLiveLink\ and <Engine Install Folder>\Engine\Binaries\Win64\ZEDLiveLinkFusion\.

Build for Linux #

  1. Go inside the Engine root directory and run Setup.sh from the terminal. This will check all the project dependencies and update them as needed.
  2. Clone the ZED Live Link repository inside of /Engine/Source/Programs.
  3. In the Engine root directory, run GenerateProjectFiles.sh.
  4. Run make to build the Engine.
  5. Go to /Engine/Build/BatchFiles and open a terminal.
  6. Build the sample with the following command.
  • For the mono camera sample :
$ ./RunUAT.sh BuildGraph -Script=Engine/Source/Programs/zed-livelink/zed-livelink-mono/BuildZEDLinux.xml -Target="Stage ZEDLiveLink Linux"
  • For the fusion sample :
$ ./RunUAT.sh BuildGraph -Script=Engine/Source/Programs/zed-livelink/zed-livelink-fusion/BuildZEDLinux.xml -Target="Stage ZEDLiveLinkFusion Linux"
  1. The binaries will be placed in <Engine Install Folder>/Engine/Binaries/Linux/ZEDLiveLink/ for the mono camera sample and in <Engine Install Folder>/Engine/Binaries/Linux/ZEDLiveLinkFusion/ for the fusion/multi-cameras sample.