Why am I seeing a difference in performance from using the Editor vs Standalone build?

I’ve been trying to get my head around why my build was slow but the editor was smooth. Anyone have a clue what’s going on here?

Exactly the same meshes. Setting the same quality levels in the level blueprint on start.
8 skeletal meshes (4 using bones, 4 faces using blendshapes).

Editor runs at 101 FPS in play mode, standalone runs at 18 FPS. Vsync off in both cases. Standalone generates 4x the skel mesh draw calls, 4 x the verts and 4 x the tris. Couldn’t see any difference in the images.

See the attached image for stat output.

Is there some obvious reason for the difference?

That’s strange and not expected, considering you were comparing play mode in editor (which runs blueprints etc) vs standalone.

Could you attach compared ‘stat scenerendering’ and the log output from ‘profilegpu’. Those should get a better idea of what the cost is coming from, although not necessarily what is causing it.

link text

Found the key element causing the issues.

Update GPU Skin in the editor takes 1.3 msec

Update GPU Skin in the game takes 39.0 msec

The editor was off in the game capture (nothing else taking massive GPU resources).

(As a side note: this is a good link on profiling tools What are the in-engine tools for CPU and GPU profiling? - Debugging, Optimization, & Profiling - Epic Developer Community Forums )

Have a few more readings on the problem. I tested another rig based off entirely different geo. Single instance of the mesh. Same result:

Then I started a fresh project, Blank no starter content. Imported original face rig above. Inserted single instance of the mesh. Profiled in editor, built executable, profiled in executable. Same result:

I’ve also applied the 4.1 framerate hotfix between the first post and this one.

Can you convert this to a bug report? Either the editor should reflect game performance or the game version needs to run as fast as the editor (I’d prefer the latter!).

Posted as a bug: Morph targets have very poor performance in game vs editor - Character & Animation - Epic Developer Community Forums