Editor memory issues (leak or poor "GC" control?)

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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I can reproduce this over and over again in my project that I’m working on. I do as follows to quickly “overload” my ram:

Note: I don’t get any errors when packaging/cooking and I don’t have any issues with memory leaking in the actual game

EDIT: And to specify, these steps are just a fast way to bloat up the ram for me. Just simply opening, closing and working in blueprints will fill it up as well. It just takes a little bit longer and by little, I mean that I can do so in like 5 minutes instead of 5 seconds.

  1. Open my project and do nothing: Editor memory will sit around 1.2gb

  2. Select, but not open, a fairly complex blueprint of mine

  3. Right click it and open the reference viewer

  4. Set the sliders all the way to their maximums: Editor memory will instantly jump to around 2.5gb

  5. Set them back to normal and close out of it

  6. Sit around for a length of time, the ram count doesn’t drop at all

  7. Hit play in viewport, screw around for a second and hit escape: Editor memory will drop to around 2gb

  8. Now for the rest of the time I am in the editor, it will sit no lower than 2gb

I can repeat this over and over again.

So on top of that issue, blueprints seem to slowly memory leak until they spill over into the page file; at which point, everything starts crawling because of HDD thrash. It seems to be that every time compile is hit, it adds a bit to the memory. I mean the memory will go up and down over time, naturally, but the overall trend is that it fills up more than it drains. I end up having to restart the editor really frequently and have to watch my memory to make sure it doesn’t spill over into the page file because if it does, it will take ages to close/restart the editor and such. It’s gotten to the point where no joke, I absolutely avoid loading my player character BP if I can…

Basically, it seems like the editor doesn’t purge old stuff out frequently enough or something along those lines. With the blueprints, it almost feels like any time you move something or make a change or add something new, it’s constantly taking snapshots of every single node, in the BP, and remembering it ALL for things like undo history maybe? A friend of mine has a PC with 32gb of ram and has these exact same issues all the time as well.

To sum it up: UE does not respect your ram and is extremely inefficient and managing “garbage collection” (for lack of a better term).

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Hey IronicParadox,

Just out of curiosity, can you show me the node graph of your Character BP?

If possible, could you send me your project? I’d like to see this for myself because the memory increases that you’re reporting (2.5gb) doesn’t really sound like a lot when you decide to load every asset in your game using the reference viewer. Does it keep increasing when you repeat after step 8?

If you’d like to keep it private, you can PM me a download link on the forums.

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Hi IronicParadox,

We have not heard back from you in a few days, so we are marking this post as Resolved for tracking purposes. If you are still experiencing the issue you reported, please respond to this message with additional information and we will follow up.