today I created a Mesh in Blender 2.74 which uses 842786 Verts and a cycles Material and exported it to FBX 7.4.
Every time I’m trying to import it in UE4 (4.7.5) with setting to import materials too the Editor freezes.
The project log looks like this:
[2015.04.14-14.19.13:252][ 0]LogLoad: Full Startup: 24.89 seconds (BP compile: 1.41 seconds)
[2015.04.14-14.19.13:296][ 0]LogContentBrowser:Verbose: The content browser source was changed by the sources view to ‘/Game/ThirdPersonBP/Blueprints/FloorTiles’
[2015.04.14-14.19.13:510][ 0]LogRenderer:Warning: Reallocating scene render targets to support 32x32 (Frame:2).
[2015.04.14-14.19.13:746][ 0]LogRenderer:Warning: Reallocating scene render targets to support 728x544 (Frame:4).
[2015.04.14-14.19.14:195][ 8]LogAssetRegistry: Asset discovery search completed in 8.5834 seconds
[2015.04.14-14.19.17:917][109]LogContentBrowser:Verbose: The content browser source was changed by the sources view to ‘/Game/Personal’
Well it seems as if UE4 importer can’t handle this ammount of verts.
I also tryied it without the material, but it also crashes, then I managed it to decrease the ammount of verts with the same material and it worked (even if it freezes also for a few min)
First thank you for the material breakdown, but since it also freezes without the Material being imported I want to focus there. UE4 can import any number of vertices the total amount is entirely dependent on the individual computer GPU and CPU Hardware; and we regularly run import tests with meshes of well over a million verts. There may be an issue with the triangulation of your FBX into UE4. If possible can you share your FBX? If needed you can keep it private by messaging me through the Forums as well.
Also as test can you try to import the FBX and let the Engine be frozen for an extended period to see if it ever recovers and finishes importing to the engine?
Thanks for the support.
Since the file is too large i will see if I can send it in a PM.
When I tryied to import it I let it run for about 10 min.
Maybe thats not enougth.
For a model the size you have you are looking at a 30 to 2 hour import and possibly even more as the engine must triangulate the entire mesh and since I do not see a very clear UV unwrap it also has to generate one of those as well.
I’m not sure how many polys he was tying to bring in, but assuming it was around the same as mine…that sucks. Obviously we can individually import sections of the scene, and UE4 seems to be able to handle that quickly, but it’s not able to handle the whole entire scene at one time. For simple prototyping in engine (just getting a sense of scale and things), that’s pretty inefficient for UE4. Is that a hard limit, or something that can be improved upon in future updates? I mean, 2 hours to get a scene in… when if we broke it up (albeit time consuming itself), would take maybe 30-1hr, depending on the number of FBX exports and then Imports into Engine and how fast you are at doing that. I understand that the biggest thing are the UV layout and Cleaning up the mesh before import. But sometimes you just want to see what it’s going to look like before continuing on and not have to worry about things like that for now. Just a thought. Maybe allow some bypass/override.
First I will say that you both have a similar but unrelated issue which is why I have not been taking to you guys together but separately.
Here is a brief rundown for Mesh importing into the engine for large poly meshes:
There are some improvements that will help with meshes over 50k polygons coming, but the issue here is that when you import a mesh that is very complex, has a lot of pieces, and is not triangulated into the editor the import process is going to optimize it.
If you triangulate your mesh before exporting to FBX this can improve the import time.
When you import a mesh with lots of small objects and combine them vs non-combined there is a bunch of copying around in memory which can take a while. Right now, when these are being combined it saves after each piece has been combined which can slow down the process. There is some things in the work to help with this but from what I’ve been told this is still needs testing.
Cache optimizing index buffers. With this step there is attempts to organize the index buffer which will map vertices to triangles which in turn allows the GPU to more efficiently load vertices for many faces. This means that there is a need to optimize the mesh before it is rendered.
It may appear like the editor is freezing at the 50% mark, but in-fact it’s still processing your mesh. Depending on the complexity and the considerations above can directly affect how long the import process may take. If you let the computer continue, in time it will import, but depending on the system it could be a while. In some of my test with some Arch Viz and machinery assets I’ve seen import times take up to 7 1/2 hours for a single mesh that was being combined, high poly, and lots of small pieces.
Some of these improvements should be coming in 4.8, which means they would be in Master Branch on GitHub, and some are coming in future engine releases.
I know it is a bit off topic but could you provide more details on what “in the works” means? In Detail: Are there already improvements in the master branch on github that I could use as of today or only theoretical planning on Epic’s end? Thank you very much
