ok so before I try to make a AAA game using the free epic assets how long should I expect a fully AAA graphics game to build using the highest settings possible. a couple hours? Days???
That’s a vague question, light building time depends on the software, hardware, and the type of content (how much memory the textures use, how much geometry, how many lights, what types of lights, how big is the map)
In case of our game - full lights rebake for all levels (at production quality) was around 23h (on 4 E5-2680v3 based workstations with 64GB RAM each)
(the whole game was structured into 30 light - independent sections, so each machine baked their own sections)
Final packaging (after lights rebuild) was around 20 - 25 minutes.
Our light build with high quality takes around 42 hours with single computer. Around twice as much with production.Packaging is lot faster around 30 minutes.