CueSync for Unreal Is on Fab

The Level Is Part of the Show Now

CueSync drives a lighting desk, a media server and a sound cue list from one cue, and with CueSync for Unreal it drives an Unreal Engine level the same way. The plugin is free, it is built for Unreal Engine 5.8, and it has been on Fab, Epic's marketplace, since 8 October.

What it gives a level comes in two parts. The first needs nothing but a connection: the world moves with the music. The second needs one pairing: the world follows the show.

A World That Moves with the Music

CueSync sends what it knows about the music — where the beat and the bar are, how much energy the track has, a colour drawn from its key, and how many beats remain until the next drop — and the plugin makes all of it readable from any material or Niagara system, with no code. Build against the drop countdown and the world arrives with the drop instead of after it.

Drops, bursts and camera cuts arrive as Blueprint events, for the moments that should be decisions rather than motion. And for the common jobs there is nothing to wire at all: drop a driver component on a light, a fixture group, a material, a post-process volume or a camera, and it follows the music on its own.

A World That Follows the Cue List

Pair the plugin with CueSync once and the level follows the show itself:

• Every way of firing reaches it. A cue, a pad, a scene and an AutoPilot moment all land in the level.
• The state is mirrored, not just triggered. Rewind a Theatre show and the world reverts with it; stop the show and everything its cues set is released. Nothing is left stuck on.
• The world chases the show clock. While CueSync sends locked timecode, the plugin becomes the engine's timecode provider, and a Level Sequence set to chase follows jumps, scrubs with the show and rides over a momentary gap.
• A blackout is a blackout. It fades the camera and holds until CueSync releases it, whatever the project wired.
• Rehearsals stay rehearsals. In DRY nothing reaches the level.

It works the other way too. An artist who blocks a piece in Sequencer has already decided where things happen, and CueSync can import the Level Sequence's markers as a Theatre track: a marker named for an accent becomes a cue that fires it, and every other marker becomes a labelled cue at the right time. For an offline film, a track's music data bakes into a Level Sequence frame by frame.

The Stage, Built and Lit in the Engine

Two more kinds of product sit beside the plugin.

RigSync builds stage and lighting rigs inside Unreal as parametric objects — truss runs, towers, arcs, decks and video walls — and places, aims, names, numbers and patches every fixture from a rule you state. It writes the MVR, the light plot and the paperwork. RigSync builds rigs; CueSync programs shows.

The fixture packs light them. CueSync Pixel is LED pixel fixtures, CueSync Moving Heads is moving heads, and CueSync Strobe & Blinder is strobes and audience blinders. Each fixture takes Art-Net and sACN and ships with a GDTF that matches the render, so the rig you patch at the desk is the rig you see in the engine — whether CueSync sends the DMX or your console does.

RigSync and the packs are on Fab too; their manuals are on this site, starting with RigSync's. The Moving Heads and Strobe & Blinder demo shows, and Pixel's strobe look, flash fast enough to trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy; each manual says where before you press Play.

Getting Started

1. Get CueSync for Unreal free on Fab and install it in an Unreal Engine 5.8 project, then enable it in Edit → Plugins. It turns on the stock engine plugins it needs.
2. Place the plugin's bus in your level and press Play. The plugin manual shows where.
3. In CueSync, add an Unreal Engine 5 output under Network → Outputs, pointed at the machine running Unreal.
4. For cues and timecode, pair the output once with the token the plugin's Monitor shows.

Which Edition Drives It

Every CueSync edition includes the Unreal output, each on its own terms. DJ drives a world from a set: the music feed and AutoPilot's planned moments. Theatre drives it from a cue list on timecode or GO, with the cue mirror, the clock and Sequencer markers. Production does both in one show file — the edition virtual production calls for.

Further Reading

• CueSync for Unreal — the plugin, what it does and where to get it
• The plugin manual — setup, pairing and every option
• Virtual production with CueSync — a worked example on an LED volume
• AutoPilot + Unreal Engine 5: Letting the DJ Direct the Camera — the music-driven half in depth
• Unreal Engine 5 integration

Unreal® and Unreal Engine® are trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. CueSync is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Epic Games.