[Feature Request] Cancel Button at Compiling Shaders

if the engine will compile much shaders is blocks my development, i need a cancel button there. (me using 4.16.2)
i suggest also a hourglass icon in menüs for time expensive tasks.
please check also the response times at build tasks if me click cancel there.

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I want this feature too. For instance working with LAM (Landscape Automatic Material), you change specific landscape materials, those begin to compile upon changes, which is okay, you can still work. But once you save the master material the editor goes into unresponsive mode.

Also moving a folder, renaming assets, fixing up redirectors takes way too long. Such a task for a environment pack from the market usually takes several hours.

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@unit23 agree with you about folder operations. i added a issue about because this annoying me momentarily.

Just disable the instant preview and use the spacebar to preview instead. When you actually apply the changes you will have to wait, but it doesn’t make much sense to pause here because then what would your material look like in game? Like nothing?

currently i can not work because Processing source file changes blocks editor task, but cpu is between 25 and 50%. (have 4 cores)
i believe it was PBRPlatzPackVol2 that i added last.

@cyaoeu yes, empty material is better than can not work at game.

100% in agreement, there needs to be an option to just disable this.

I’m a programmer and due to doing contract work am regularly loading up projects and testing plugins in numerous engine versions, launcher and source built. For 90%+ of my work I couldn’t care less if everything was rendered with the default material, most of the time I’m just hopping between Visual Studio and the editor, often not even running a level. Shader compilation, especially just after installing/building a new engine, is a complete waste of processor cycles and time.

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today waiting minutes after double click until this rock opens in editor. means the main editor not react.ee8dbcdf3ed5fbe0bdf180fd208cbc444053f8e9.jpeg
the rock is part of “European Forest”.
often the content browser blocking the main editor too if this generating thumbnails.

@cyaoeu please can you tell me where can i find this “disable the instant preview”

In the material editor there’s Live Preview, Live Nodes and Live Update, disable those.

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+1 here, we are working with SVN, and once in a while that our level designers summit something new, I have to wait ages to open a level because shaders, in this case I decided never update until have everything done, but you know we need integrations often

Always wanted such button in UE4.

really great idea, hopefully simple to add…

after working some more time at a game i have this editor better under control
but i think the best solution is that everything what need more than 10 seconds run at extra cpu core.
when the heartbeat from editor stops it is really annoying especially if me work during my leisure time.
@cyaoeu thanks for the hint :slight_smile:

I know this is quite an old thread, but PLEASE Epic, add this charming feature for us!

Mistakenly I’ve added a prop that has up to 2k shaders to compile, and even after deleting the prop it keeps compiling the shaders and I’m unable to proceed to develop because my level is in a complete blackout!

i bought a new pc … 12x 3,2 GHz ^^

I also need this feature.

I implemented this feature in PR #4704, see https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/pull/4704 . Please let me know if people encounter any issues with it.

@franktech I’ll have a look at the first 2, the large level one unfortunately is not possible I believe, I might be able to add a confirmation dialog to it when it detects that the level has a large amount of dependencies (or something) but I can’t promise anything.

@franktech Ye the right click menu is annoying with the fact that it does do a load for it and unfortunately there isn’t anything I can do about that. I’ve tried, but it is necessary for reasons (which I can’t remember off the top of my head).

Cyaoeu is right. Disabling Live Preview and Live Update stopped the engine from Compiling shaders while I was working on materials. Great tip!