How to include Third Party library (like boost / PCL) in a custom plugin? [SOLVED]

Hey guys,

I want to include an external C++ library (namely the Point Cloud Library and boost) into Unreal (and include their functions into the Editor). I heard that I have to make a custom plugin for that, however the documentation is really not helping much. Where do I start?

Hey,

after a couple of horrible weeks of trying and googling and getting angry about the documentation/complexity, I finally figured it out. Therefore I decided to make a complete tutorial on how to include an external third party library into unreal and use their functions.

Before that, I have to complain to the Unreal developers a bit: First of all, the complexity of the code and the amount of boiler-plate code one needs is quite high. Furthermore, the documentation and also the error messages don’t help very much solving the problems (at least regarding plugin creation). For the future, I’d like to encourage you to reduce the code complexity / amount of boiler-plate code and to improve the documentation.


Anyhow, here is the Tutorial on my blog:

A boost / PCL plugin template to be used as a starting point can be downloaded here:

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It would be nice if someone could test the tutorial/plugin template, though. If you have questions, feel free to write me/answer. thanks!

Currently testing this plugin, or at least trying to. I have contacted you through your blog. Hope to hear from you soon, because we are super interested in getting our point clouds running inside UE4.

Thanks so much for this tutorial. It helped me figure out a problem I was having with integrating another lib, and had been banging at it for hours. Turns out I had not noticed we should use those macros THIRD_PARTY_INCLUDES_START and THIRD_PARTY_INCLUDES_END for the libs’ includes.