Your thoughts on and comments to Volume Rendering in Unreal Engine 4.

[tommybazar]

RyanB Thanks, I also thought the depth reading was the cause on android, but wasn't sure.

Had another unrelated question - did you guys ever need to get VolumeTexture data back from the GPU onto the CPU?
For example to save a volume that was painted at runtime.
I see that all texture types (except for volume) have RHI functions to either lock the resource so you can read from it or to straight up read the data from them, but Volume Textures are like poor cousins, none of the regular utility functions exist on the RHI
What we do now is - make slices out of volume texture and then get the data out of those. Obviously suboptimal, was wondering if there was a better way.

[harry1511]

RyanB you are right, I removed the scene depth, and it was still super choppy in Oculus Go. Maybe I should find another cheaper solution (if there is any out there) for mobile headsets. I will give it another try with HTC Vive next week though, and see...

tommybazar how is yours progress with it so far?

[harry1511]

Update: I tested with HTC Vive, it works perfectly as expected! So I found a way to stream the packaged game from PC to Oculus Go instead of sideloading the project directly onto the headset. This is the only solution I can come with to have the content run on Oculus Go without suffering from heavy performance.

tommybazar curious if you have figure a way to make this stuff work on mobile headset.

[tommybazar]

tommybazar how is yours progress with it so far?

So, it only took me 3 months but I already got started on it
I started making some changes to the structure of the plugin aside from just cleaning it up, so it will be more work than I expected.

I'm hoping that the monsoon season finally starts here, so that I can keep working on this through the weekends without my friends constantly harassing me with going surfing and hiking and the like

I'm pretty much done with the first part, which is a standalone plugin with functions for creating Volume Texture assets from .mhd and .raw files and some basic general utility functions. I'll polish it up and upload it next week.

Then I will get started on the actual Raymarcher. It will be more work then I originally thought, because I've gotten some more experience working on our actual product and I intend to change the structure of the raymarched volume assets completely to make working with them really pleasant.

It's coming, trust me (even though, like I said, I break promises).

Cheers, Tommy.

[AnthonyStudio]

Is the downloadable project working for 4.25? I can't get it to work, its just showing the default grids

[tommybazar]

Is the downloadable project working for 4.25? I can't get it to work, its just showing the default grids

Hey man, not sure about the status on 4.25, but I am actually getting to work on the project this weekend.
Release that works and is nice is coming next weekend at the latest. For real this time.

[HowardM2020]

Hi Ryan, everyone, cheers for all the great tools and help!
Can someone help me figure this out? I want to do a 16k image, with 1024 pixel tiles, 16x16, and it wont make a VT correctly.. its got gaps and lines, doesn't tile... in end even trying 512, 16x16 at 8k does not seem to work? (comes in at like 512x512x400) Are Volume Textures capped at 400x400 and thats why you did not list anything higher?
Cheers!

[NilsonLima]

Hi Ryan, everyone, cheers for all the great tools and help!
Can someone help me figure this out? I want to do a 16k image, with 1024 pixel tiles, 16x16, and it wont make a VT correctly.. its got gaps and lines, doesn't tile... in end even trying 512, 16x16 at 8k does not seem to work? (comes in at like 512x512x400) Are Volume Textures capped at 400x400 and thats why you did not list anything higher?
Cheers!

Depending on the engine release, you will need to change some .INI file to allow working with 8k size textures. You can find the correct .INI file and the specific setting to change at the UE4 Documentation pages. Since this setting exists since UE4.8, I am not sure it can be changed to 16k... in theory it could on newer engine releases past UE4.21, but I haven't tried myself.