I’m trying to paint grass onto my landscape and I’m finding the editor freezes for 5-10 seconds whenever I try to paint on a fresh area. I’ve had no problems with other foliage, but the grass is higher density than the rest.
paint density: 1
density: 22 / 1Kuu
radius: 50
currently at 50k instances, but I’ll probably need at least 500k for the whole map. The framerate is no problem once the grass is placed, but I’ve got several kilometers to fill and it’ll probably take a week to paint, wait, paint, wait, paint my way through it.
I found this thread, but it pertains to 4.7. Is this now a permanent problem for large landscapes?
UPDATE: While experimenting with this problem, I discovered a larger issue with foliage painting that might be related.
I am going to answer this and your [other question][1] in this post since they are so closely related.
There are a number of factors that could be causing this issue. Since you are trying to paint grass, which is usually at a much higher density than other foliage instances, you will want to take into account things like the size, radius, and density of your brush when painting. Depending on your hardware, these freezes could be attributed to your machine attempting to load a large number of foliage instances at once.
Could you provide me with your ‘dxdiag’ so I can take a look at your system’s specifications?
If you are trying to paint at the max brush size with a high density and your machine is struggling to populate those instances immediately, I would try lowering the brush size, density, and even your engine scalability settings. This can help with overall editor performance as well. There are also a number of other ways to apply foliage to your scene, like the [Procedural Foliage Volume][2] and the [Landscape Grass Tool][3]. Both very effective ways of applying grass like foliage, especially across a large landscape such as in your case.
[Your other question][4]
Outside of using the other two methods mentioned above to evenly control foliage density across your landscape, there are other painting features in Foliage painting tool to edit the currently applied foliage. You were right in assuming applying foliage when clicking is a multiplicative process and will iterate on top of pre-existing foliage. There are ways to avoid and work around the functionality, which begin by making sure you have tested what each stroke or click produces when painting. It is very easy to get out of hand when painting foliage, and if you do not have LODs established for your foliage instances, performance will take a hit. If you do manage to overpopulate an area with select foliage instances, you can use the re-apply tool to adjust the density on a per click basis.
There are a number of ways for you to efficiently place foliage on your landscape while still being able to control density and performance. The procedural Foliage tool and the Landscape Grass tool are both great alternatives to using the Foliage Painting tool.
Let me know if you have further questions or need additional assistance.
Thanks for the help, I’m going to try your suggestions and see what works best. I’m also making a Landscape tutorial series, so learning these foliage options is crucial.
Here’s the dxdiag if you still wanted to take a look
Hi guys, this performance problem in 4.14 was caused by a change in the static mesh lighting code. It’s being tracked as UE-40221 and it will be fixed for 4.15. Keep an eye on that ticket as the fix will appear in Github if you want it sooner.
