The build DDC steps I gave you are the way to compile all of those shaders ahead of time. With your method, you shouldn’t have to do it every time, but I would recommend that you close the editor immediately after any long shader compile takes place. This will “lock it in”, so to speak. If you were to crash instead of closing normally, you’d have to do it all over again.
Building may solve some of your LOD freezes, unless it’s a completely unrelated issue.
Also, your changes to the BaseEngine.ini file should essentially similar to -ddc=noshared. You shouldn’t need to use -ddc=noshared anymore. It’s up to you if you’d like to extend the “MinimumDaysToKeepFile” variable too. You’ll notice there are some important settings missing from the [NoShared] section that are present in [InstalledDerivedDataBackendGraph]. Just make sure you have these same .ini changes in all of your engine versions too.
My project was converted from 4.12, so I ran these cmd commands (… -run=DerivedDataCache -fill, enter, getting coffee, etc.) and the freezes are gone for now! I haven’t tested it long enough though, but it seems like it might be a solution for the freezes. Thank you!
So, I finally did that too. Then loaded project through the launcher. Didn’t have any freezes, until I switched to ES2 preview (which recompiled bunch of shaders) and re-baked lighting. After that I was back to square one
P.S. Restarted engine, loaded project - freezes began as soon as I selected my ISM actor.
I deleted Intermediate, Saved, Binaries, Build and DerivedCache folders from my project, reopened it and it had no freezes until I selected a static mesh on the level.
The filled cache as described above - no difference.
Minor additional details - I experience a freeze when selecting an actor on the level. After freeze is over, if I don’t do anything but navigate, no additional freeze happens. Same goes for changing something on selected actor (change material for example)
Also my project has persistent level with 2 streaming levels.
Anyhow, I give up I find myself fighting 4.13 more than working on my project.
Have you made any changes to your config files at all? It seems that the solution provided worked for Slavq, so I’d be curious to see what the differences are on your end that are causing you to continue to experience the freezing.
I provided modified BaseEngine.ini above. Basically when I installed UE 4.13, I right away went into the .ini and replaced %whatever% (there were 2 macros that were not %GAMEDIR% and that was making UE4 create DDC in my user dir on C: drive) with %GAMEDIR%. That’s all I did.
Did you modify the BaseEngine.ini in 4.12 too or just for 4.13?
We really are running out of avenues to investigate this and cannot continue to invest time in something that appears to be isolated to your computer. I know we’ve had other users chime in, but their issues are either resolved or they aren’t responding anymore.
We have no way of telling if this is some piece of software you have installed that is conflicting with the engine, hardware issues, or just low spec hardware (your CPU is below our recommendations and RAM is right at the minimum). It could very well be DDC issues, which is why I still have a few recommendations.
Please either A) Uninstall the launcher and reinstall it on another drive(and reinstalling engine versions there as well) or B) Make some space on C: and revert your ini files to default
I think I found what causes freezes - InstaLOD plugin.
I created new project using FPS template and just started messing with stuff in the scene. Had no freezes at all.
Then I copied InstaLOD plugin from my actual project into this newly created FPS template and almost immediately I began experiencing freezes.
Going to report it to the author. Can’t wait for UE4 to have native LOD generation tools - as it is engine is complex and with 3rd party plugins it’s hard to track what causes issues (between UE4 and installed plugins).
P.S. I deleted plugin, and now clean project freezes as badly as the core project I am working on. I give up. Maybe it is my hardware. Who knows…
Hi there, I am one of the developers of InstaLOD.
I’ve already replied to your question on the forums, but I wanted to reply here as well.
As you pointed out yourself, this is unrelated to InstaLOD. Infact the integration of LOD into UE4 is by among the best in the industry that I have seen so far. UE4 basically just invokes our API when LOD needs to be generated, InstaLOD by itself does not act on it’s own. Everything is actively invoked from UE4 and stored in it’s local cache. InstaLOD by itself is a passive plugin and relies on the API points provided by UE4. So there is close to nothing that InstaLOD can do that could cause any harm to UE4.
But I did read the thread, and it might be that you’re running out of memory and that your system might be doing a lot of swap work. I’d also be careful with modifying the engine.ini files. A lot can easily broken with moving the data cache folders and modifying their timeouts. Depending on the system and project, rebuilding the UE4 datacache with all materials, geometry and shaders can take hours.
It’s quite unfortunate that UE4 doesn’t work as it should for you, but maybe a clean reinstall of Windows might help. And thanks for clearing up that it’s unrelated to InstaLOD
Nope, it doesn’t. I literally ran out of ideas. Something changed in UE4 from 4.11 to 4.12/4.13 that make it freeze on older hardware. So I guess I can only wait 'till I upgrade and see if that solves the issue.
I’m experiencing this same problem and in my case, I’ve noticed that until i activate stat fps/unit/foliage the freezes are quite sparse. Once i type that command, they happen every 2 secs which makes it impossible to work.
Also, I’ve noticed that turning off all engine plugins which were not needed for my project (all that contained ios/android/oculus rift in their name) helped considerably: before the freezes happened when doing almost everything. After disabling the plugins, the freezes became way less frequent and only very frequent after enabling stat commands.
Funny thing is I had to load 4.11 yesterday to check something, and I didn’t have any freezes. So while I do agree my hardware is ancient (except for my GPU), 4.11 doesn’t have the issue. So something changed in 4.13 that makes it really hard to use on older hardware. Oh well, UE4 was always regarded as hi-end engine so I really should upgrade my PC.
i don’t know what most plugins do, what i did however is disable all those plugins whose names contain “android/ios/oculus rift” words, since i could tell they were related to those platforms and therefore not neede for my project, which is windows-only. basically i was trying to reduce as much CPU usage as possible. not sure if that’s a good way to do it, but it helped reduce the constant freezes so that made me happy
Right, another wild guess. Whoever is still getting freezes, would you mind checking if presence of landscape in the level currently loaded makes any difference?
I noticed that most freezes happen after I add an actor into my level (or add a component to existing actor). That yields UE4 useless for some time. Once freezes subside, I usually restart UE4 to continue working with minimal amount of freezes.
It’s so bad that I hardly progress with my project
