So, I’ve been able to work just about everything out, including triangle subdivision and even displacement via a height map, but it is SLOW. With a simple recursive algorithm, just doing 3 iterations of the subdivision process can take a full second. Just to generate 1152 triangles. It’s not a super complex blueprint so I’m rather surprised how slow it is. Is this a known problem or am I doing something wrong? It also seems highly variable. I have 3 instances of the same BP actor in my scene, with the sub div steps set to 2, 3, and 4 respectively and the sub div function prints out how long it took to do the subdivision. I’m seeing times from 0.984 seconds for 2 steps, to 0.984 for 3 steps, and 0.69 for 4 steps. It doesn’t seem directly related to the number of steps, which I am surprised by. I’d had hoped that I would be able to do a few more iterrations then 3 before seeing a major impact. As it stands now, generating a normal sized hex map with 1000 tiles would take 500-1000 seconds. That’s a rather lengthy load time!
Also, interacting with these actors in the editor seems laggy. It takes a few seconds after trying to move one of these actors before it does and it’s very slow to react. And it’s slower when interacting with the actors that have more steps. For example, I can move the 2-step mesh easily enough, but it feels laggy. Interacting with the 3-step mesh takes several seconds to respond. It’s not regenerating the mesh each frame is it? By contrast, moving a regular static mesh in the same scene seems normal. Even with the subdivisions turned off, interacting with the actor is slower then with a regular static mesh. Oddly enough, turning off both the subdivision and the displacement seems to make the interaction normal. However, since I’m doing all this in the construction script, that shouldn’t matter. Should it? Is there something unique to using the construction script that affects interactivity? This is my first attempt at creating an actor using the construction script so if there’s a trick do it, please let me know.
Also on the subject of Editor interactions, when I hit the F key to frame one of my actors, it zooms to the extent of the scene. It does not frame the mesh as expected. This would imply to me that the actor’s bounding box isn’t being set properly. I don’t see any way to do that. Is that no possible yet?
Now, before anyone goes nuts, yes I know this is an experimental feature. But the whole point of an experiment is to gather data. Which is what I am providing here. I’m not complaining or anything, just letting it be known what my experiences are and what I would hope them to be in the future. I’d really like to see this feature, and many more procedurally generated content oriented features, really get the polish they need to shine. I earnest believe that the future of gaming will depend on procedurally generated content and would love to see UE’s support of it grow. It’s tools like that which will enable us all to create more with less which is a win for IMOHO. Cheers,
J^2
P. S. I’ll follow up with some images tomorrow.