Lighting Crashes / 16gbRam Maxes Out

[T3CHZ]

So I pretty much followed this video step for step, it’s a windows 7 gaming optimization video.

Optimizing / Tweaking Windows 7 for Gaming

He instructed us with ways to manipulate these programs/files.

uac,
windows update,
startup,
paging file,
windows performance,
windows defender,
all updates for software,
background images,
raid 0 and ssd,
write caching,
hibernation,
services pre fetch super fetch and such (registry aswell) ,
windows features ,
moving files for user defaults ,
power saving features in motherboard,
power settings in windows,
unparking cpu ,
ssd trim ,
indexing ,
shutdown lag,
no gui boot,
msi afterburner,
malware bytes,
move temp files to other hard drive,
ssd software,
drivers,
registry/cc cleaner,
avg,
defrag,
java/flash,

Now anytime I attempt to build lighting in my map, my ram revs up and maxes out at 16gb - my cpu ramps up as well and the lighting fails.

I also built a house with 103 static meshes, wondering if them all casting there own shadow has something to do with it. If so how can i keep the materials and combined the static mesh to have faces but act as one giant mesh.

Should I even be modeling houses and architecture in unreal ?

He had us disable our virtual mem and superfetch ect - I since enabled virtual mem again - now my lighting does not fail as fast, but it still revs everything up to the max and fails in the end.

Sorry for all the randomness but I need some guidance.

Thanks.

[anonymous_user_6e7b421a]

Hello T3CHZ,

It seems you made a lot of major changes to the way your computer performs. I took a quick glance through the video and if you made all the changes he suggested, it is going to be very difficult for me to determine where and why the Swarm Agent is failing to build.

Were you able to successfully build lighting prior to making these optimization changes to your computer?

What version of the engine are you running, and does the build fail in a blank project?

Typically when you are modeling something that you want to have accurate amounts of detail, you would do this in an external modeling program like 3ds Max, Maya, or Blender. If you are just trying to flesh out your level using basic primitives you can use BSP’s which allow for quick construction and editing of your scene.

Now depending on the size and amount of meshes in your scene, some would serve better as a single mesh, and others could be combined into a single asset. Combining too many static meshes as one whole mesh could cause the baked lighting to lose quality since they will have their lighting baked together in one UV lightmap.

Here is some documentation and tips on the Static Mesh pipeline we suggest following when working with Unreal and general game development.

Static Mesh Pipeline

Static Meshes

Let me know if you get stuck or are confused about anything and I will do my best to answer your questions.

Cheers,

[T3CHZ]

Hello Andrew,
Great name by the way, my name is as well.
So I have re-enabled super-fetch and pre-fetch and my virtual memory in hopes this would fix my problem but still no luck. I am starting to think it is my actual map that is the problem and not my computer. I am able to compile successfully the lighting of a blank map, or a template map, but when I attempt to do my simple cabin the lighting refuses to work. Here are some screenshots of the whole process so you can get a better idea of what I’m working with.

Now I am still unsure how to take each individual log and combined them into one static mesh or a bsp as you were saying. I have grouped them together and enabled " light group as one " but it did not make a difference. I have in the past made more complex cabins in the Unreal Engine and had a lot more going on in my scene with no problems building lighting. I am using UnrealEngine 4.7.6.

Another thing to note is that I am scared to let the lighting build because it is maxing out my ram and cpu, I let it run for 5 minutes to see if it gets past 1% and it never does. I have made a cabin in blender before and exported the .fbx into unreal engine but the problem I have with this is that I lose my material for everything. And since it becomes a 1 piece static mesh, I have not found a way to paint the faces without the whole mesh becoming 1 material.

Thank you for the taking the time to help me on this, I really really appreciate it.

[T3CHZ]

I deleted all the lights in my scene and it successfully built the lighting, but it took 5 minutes, unussually long for a level with no light… and maxed out my ram again. Once it was built I added an directional light into the scene and attempted to build it once more, It made it to 2% this time. I feel like I have made a wrong move by following that optimization video and have somehow messed up the swarm agent.

[T3CHZ]

I figured it out, I think…

For some reason 8 of my walls were set at 2048 resolution and took up a lot of KB. When I delete them everything seems to work fine again. Here is a screenshot of the lighting static mesh info.