Hello, does UE5 have an Atlas packer? I would like to import separate images all the same power of 2 ratio and ask UE to make an atlas for me.
For example I would like to import 16 1024 x 1024 textures and ask UE to make me a 4x4 texture atlas texture.
There is an atlas packer for UE4, but it does not look like it is supported in UE5.
Hey @Sean3Dmonkey!
Are you talking about purely in-editor? Because I believe there are some marketplace plugins that will do this. However, there IS support for several atlas options. You just have to use another program (There are choices!).
Check out the documentation for that here:
I looked at Texture Packer https://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker/tutorials/unrealengine
The output of the texture has jaggy edges, no anti alias preservation.
Is there a secret setting to preserve a smooth anti aliased outline around the image?
I probably should have asked, what resolution are the images you’re using? Because I don’t think Anti-aliasing can be done pre-render, packed in like that. Now there are alternatives that are more useful for high-pixel count textures. Are you doing something more hi-res or is it something more low-count?
Hello Mind-Brain, the textures will be 1024 or higher.
Photoshop can make an Atlas, but you have to manually drag the images into a grid. If the manual drag is not precise, there is a jitter in the anim sequence; its frustrating.
I was hoping there would be a tool in Photoshop to just select the images and make an Atlas based on rows and columns.
The texture packer you mentioned is cool, just wished it supported anti alias’d images.
UE5 supports actor merging; I don’t think you can run it on a single static mesh (maybe? Never tried) but you can use the merge actor settings window to enable baking atlases. In this way if you have several small decorative objects you can bake them down into a single mesh with a single material.
Hello Krabworks, this technique is new to me. There is a way to import textures as an actor…generate a mesh…and the mesh will have texture atlas with specified rows and columns?
Unreal Engine IS TRULY AMAZING.
I cannot find anything online about this technique would you happen to have a web link to the technique?
It is not quite as you describe - it is merging static meshes into one, so you have to begin with several SMs. However yes it does so the second part: generating a new mesh from the pieces, creating a new UV Map, and baking the texture atlas for all of them as one.
Essentially the idea is that you can optimize your game by rendering a single mesh with one material instead of several meshes each with multiple materials. E.g., if you have a table covered in plates and food, you could in theory arrange them how you want in your level and then merge all of them into a single Mesh with one texture set.
You can find more on Actor Merging in the documentation here: Merging Actors in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.1 Documentation
In my experience, simplify works best for non-Nanite SMs.
Would be nice
However
Something that I’ve been thinking about giving a go is to use the HLOD system as it does create an atlas of images used
I’m thinking once you create the substitute mesh you could detach, in a 3d app?, to retain the UV mapping or even make use of the sub mesh as is.
Awesome, I hope it works.
Hey, is there an option for merging actors in runtime?
I thought of maybe implementing a system where because of gameplay the world will change (not always, but only on “allowed to change” actors) but in order to save performance I would want so parts to be combined together to one mesh.
You could simply pre-bake a merged actor, and then use your blueprint code to destroy the existing static mesh actors and replace them with a merged one.
From what I was thinking I cannot know what the final mesh will be. For example, the player will build a house but after some time I want all the pieces of the house to combine into one mesh to save performance and make it permanent feature on the world map from then on.