Hi guys, I am trying to find some way to control content of map. I have created a large terrain (which is rendered fast, I have no issues with that) It is when I add trees, patches of grass etc… it becomes unbareably slow. I have tried adding culling volumes, but it seems to ignore those added objects. At least I see no apparent change in performance drop. I might have misunderstood, but it was my belief that each terrain patch also held objects painted on it. Or so I thought until I saw trees etc… painted on models, and even under terrain itself (Although I think that specifically is actually a bug) But regardless, since it paints on models etc… unconnected to terrain itself, I can’t see how I can control culling of sections. I can’t see them manifested anywhere, except visibly that is. So my question therefor is: Is there some way to cull away all parts of terrain (and it’s trees etc…) that is not inside viewfield of camera. Because it seems it is calculating tree, grass etc… even if not immediately visible. Objects directly behind camera seems culled though, because moving to an area where there are fewer trees in front, performance jumps up.
Hey Mithril,
You can set Start and End Cull Distance for your instanced foliage. In Static Mesh editor, expand Static Mesh Settings section. Set Foliage Default Settings to InstancedFoliageSettings. Scroll down until you see Start Cull Distance and End Cull Distance fields. Mess around with those settings until you get cull distance to something your level can handle properly and you should be good to go! Make sure you do this for each Static Mesh you’re using in your foliage.
Hope that helps!
Yup 
That was exactly it. Many thanks.
If I may also make a suggestion. By doing this, trees that I would like to see over a distance goes away. Naturally, those trees would be too costly. So, what I was thinking is this. Is it possible to have an inverse culling of imposters? So that trees can be snapshot onto a billboard at a distance (perhaps even utilizing frequency that drops over distance. Making it possible to actually fly over a beliveable terrain) only to fade away when gettting closer to camera. At which point objects in 3D could be faded in, instead?
Many thanks again for your help
/Mike
Happy to help!
Your mesh’s standard LOD settings will still work when it’s used as Foliage. With a much lower LOD set at appropriate distance, you should be able to get what you’re looking for. If you’re not familiar with LOD system, you can read up on it here:
Hey there, I’ve tried to follow these steps as well. But in my painted material (in this case, grass) had no option in Static Mesh Settings to change from default to InstancedFoliageSettings, thus no scroll down and Start/End Cull distances.
How do I unlock those? I’m using grass material from kite demo, if that helps.