This article describes how to set up a Windows development environment with Visual Studio.
The following applications are required:
- Visual Studio
- Video Player and VLC
The following applications are recommended:
- Cygwin (if you prefer developing using a UNIX-like environment)
If you do not already have them installed, you must install and set up the following applications:
- Install Ruby using the latest 32-bit version (not 64-bit): http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/
- Allow the installer to modify the PATH automatically. If you choose to do this manually, continue to step 3.
- If you chose to prevent the installer from modifying the PATH automatically, open the Control Panel and open the System icon.
- Click Advanced System Settings, and then Environment Variables.
- In Path, append the path to the Ruby bin folder, i.e. "";C:\Ruby22\bin"
Ruby_Protobuf is a pure Ruby implementation of Google's protocol buffers. It is used to pass data between the design environment (After Effects) and the development environment.
- Restart your Cygwin/command-prompt
- Install Protobuf using this command: gem install ruby_protobuf
- To verify that it ran correctly, run git bash, cmd or powershell.
- Run the command ruby -- version
CMake is an extensible, open-source system that manages the build process.
- Download CMake from https://cmake.org/download/
- Let the installer add CMake to the path; do not add it manually.
- Reboot your system.
Side-by-side versions of Visual Studio must be installed in order, from oldest to newest, to avoid problems.
Video Player and VLC
To run any sample files, you will need a video player.
- Download and install VLC: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/2.2.0.html
- Copy the libvlc.dll and libvlccore.dll into the sample's executable's directory. (Check: C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLan\VLC)