I recently was testing out using the Heightmap Global Illumination for landscapes but we decided that we didn’t need this feature. I noticed that after using it the level file size grew pretty large with the baked texture files which was now over 2gb and stopped our building process as the packager cannot write files larger than 2 gigs.
After I disabled the feature I noticed that the heightmap texture files are still present and the engine doesn’t flush them out. Is there a way to do this manually? I sometimes see the files show up in the content browser but I can’t select or delete them directly.
Right now I am attempting to fix the issue by transferring our landscape components individually through the landscape manage mode to another sub-level which looks like it doesn’t move over the baked textures. If you just move over the entire landscape actor those files do get copied over.
EDIT: It looks like even moving just the components over doesn’t fix the issue as the baked texture files still are present in the sub-levels as I move them. I’ve split up the landscape into smaller sub-levels to keep file size down for now and posted below to make sure this issue is caused by the GI and not just from large landscapes.
If not I’d submit that you might want to have it auto-delete these textures if you disable the Heightmap GI option or setup a way to do it. Let me know if there is a command that will do this for me as I’ve looked but haven’t seemed to find anything.
There’s an editor routine ALandscapeProxy::UpdateBakedTextures() which runs every few seconds and should be clearing them out if the feature is disabled. The textures are not created with the “Standalone” flag on them so I can’t see how they could be get retained if they’re not in use.
Until we understand why they’re not being cleaned up, I’m afraid I don’t have any suggestions for an easier way to get rid of them. I’ve opened ticket UE-32200 to look at the issue.
At this time I’ve worked around the packing issue by splitting up the landscape into a few sub-levels which I was planning on doing eventually anyway. I’ve attached a screenshot of the texture files I am seeing in the content browser if that helps. From what I’ve gathered on the forums these are generated from the Landscape GI being enabled.
Let me know if I am wrong as well, maybe our landscape has just gotten that big in size and we have to scale down its resolution / find what else is taking up more space, etc.
They show up like this when I was moving landscape pieces around between sub-levels but disappear when I restart the editor.
Again, let me know if this is not the case and these files are normally apart of the Landscape features anyway. Every time I look up why these texture maps showing up in the browser on the forums I’ve found threads stating they were apart of the GI for mapping the color bounce.
I also have double checked the Heightmap GI in the project settings here:
and I’ve made sure nothing in the Engine or Console Vars ini files are still enabled for the heightmap GI so everything should be turned off on my end.
