Hello, i just started with Juce one week ago and i would like to develop a plug-in. I am using Visual Studio 2017. So i made an audio plug-in proyect and compiled it. With the default configuration i got a Standalone version, which works fine as i see the window with the “Hello World” message, and a VST3 version. Now the problem is that i don’t find any .dll file in the VST3 project’s folder.
i’m sure it’s a noob question but i can´t resolve it. Does anybody has any idea?
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VST3 plugins have the extension .vst3, not .dll.
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The extension for VST3 files is “.vst3”, not “.dll”
It seems like it would make sense for the extension of a VST3 plugin to be .vst3, but the following link from FL Studio (near the bottom of the page) says that FL Studio on Windows works only with VST3 plugins if they are in a .dll format. This seems to contradict the idea that VST3s only come in .vst3 and not .dll. What does this mean and how do I develop a VST3 plugin that can run in FL Studio?
https://www.image-line.com/support/flstudio_online_manual/html/basics_externalplugins.htm
That’s likely just a typo in the FL documentation. (Also the .vst3 are really just .dll files but with the different file extension. There’s no full separate format involved.)
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FL won’t find my plugin in its original .vst3 format. When I change the extension to .dll (the contents of the file are the same), FL does find my plugin, though it fails to load. My plugin loads and works in Juce’s audio plugin host fyi.
I use .vst3 and FL does NOT find the VST3 version, only VST2 which is .dll. Weird indeed…
Funny, on macOS (OSX) it states: VST 3 Plugins (.vst3):
But on Windows: VST 3 Plugins (.dll):
Maybe they are indeed looking for the wrong files. So far no of my users complained as most use other hosts, so I don’t know now…
Yup, I did another scan, it doesn’t even touch the .vst3 files. 
All my VST3 plugins in C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 have the .vst3 extension.
Mine too, but FL won’t see those files…
I have now gotten FL to find and load my plugin by moving it to C:\Program Files\VST3 and manually adding this path to “Plugin search paths” in the plugin manager, just for good measure. (Not sure if that last part is actually needed.)
This is what the list of paths looks like now. Notice that some paths are labeled VST and some are labeled VST3.
There is still a smaller problem, which is that even though the plugin manager lists my plugin, it leaves the “status” and “vendor” fields blank and leaves “effect/synth” as “?”. The plugin runs, so it’s not a critical problem, but I’m still working on it. This doesn’t happen to 3rd party VST2’s, but it does happen to 3rd party VST3’s other than mine, so it could just be a problem with VST3 in FL.
Thanks to Running VST3 in FL Studio || Beginner - #6 by guten I fixed this. I just needed to tick “verify plugins”.