I don’t want to derail the thread here so I’ll only respond to the questions now (further questions I can answer via PM or in another thread). I know if you’re working in WorldMachine there’s a simple way to export for components. Someone made a wonderful youtube video documenting the process but the link eludes me right now.
- Fresnel falloff, in my broken artist language, is when your landscape material’s detail fades out and is replaced by a solid color over large distances. The Stylized Rendering demo can be found under the Learn tab in the launcher. It uses .
- The 2GB limit is a package size limit. It doesn’t mean that your game can’t be larger than 2GB (that’d be silly), but unreal chunks logical things into packages during the compile process. If you divide your map into sub-levels, UE4 will automatically package each sub-level separately. You can stream those sub-levels together (and even set them to always stream) and bypass the 2GB limit. The problem arises when you add foliage onto your 4km landscape via the foliage paint tool. Your landscape increases the file size dramatically and of course foliage does even more so. If you break them into components, you can stream chunks of your landscape.
- You are literally just streaming components unless you group the objects to them. You have flexibility here - it’s all about what you want to put in each sub-level. My advice is if you’re nearing 1GB package size, split it. You don’t ever want to be anywhere near the limit if you can help it. Again, takes some planning though so you know how to balance your sub-level sizes and locations (especially if you want to actually stream stuff in and out rather than setting it to always-on, which is always good for performance).
You can set your sub-levels to always stream so there’s no load time. Also, the load time (‘delay’ as you described it) is completely determined by what you’re loading and how. The proper way to stream levels is to have it always happen just beyond the player’s view so there’s no concern over popping assets.
@: you don’t need to sew anything back together. It also doesn’t look broken up in any way - there’s no visual indication you’re using components vs. a single landscape actor.
Actually I think is accurate for setting your landscape up with World Composition (coming from WorldMachine): https://wiki.unrealengine/World_Machine_to_UE4_using_World_Composition