Installation

The plugin lives at Plugins/AvatarDirector/ inside an Unreal project. There are three install strategies, all valid:

1. Direct copy

Copy the Plugins/AvatarDirector/ folder into your project’s Plugins/ directory. Simple, self-contained, easy to audit. Best for shipping a fixed snapshot.

2. Git submodule

If you keep the plugin in its own repository, add it as a git submodule pointing at Plugins/AvatarDirector/. Best when you want to track upstream updates from multiple consuming projects.

3. Junction / symlink

For active development across two projects (e.g. an internal source-of-truth repo and a demo project), a directory junction lets edits propagate live. Best for one-machine workflows.

After install

1. Add AvatarDirector to the Plugins array of your .uproject, or enable it from the editor’s Plugins panel.
2. Make sure the required plugins are also enabled.
3. Regenerate Visual Studio project files.
4. Build the editor target.
5. Open the project, place an AAvatarDirectorActor in your level (Pattern A), or have a GameMode spawn one at runtime (Pattern B).

Verifying the install

The plugin is correctly wired up if:

• AvatarDirector.dll (Editor) and/or AvatarDirector.so/dylib/dll (Runtime) appear in Plugins/AvatarDirector/Binaries/.
• The TCP listener logs Listening on port 4500 at level start.
• A connecting backend can send a single audio frame and observe the mouth flapping.

For an end-to-end sanity check there’s a stdlib-only smoke test in Tools/smoke_test.py inside the plugin tree — run it against a PIE session.