Don’t know if this is the right place for the question, but looked around and did not find any other place or link.
I buy/bought a lot of packs on the marketplace and use parts of these in my project. My “Content” folder in my current project is therefor over 33 GB (I’m not even using the Kite-demo project in there) at this moment and when packaging the project, I end up with a pack of over 35 GB. In this, the music and video’s aren’t even included …
Is there a tool that allows me to delete all non used (non referenced) assets. If I press “Delete” for a folder, I end up with a possible “Force Delete”, but I would like some way to keep these, but drop the others (non referenced). I also noticed that the delete of some folders just pumps up the internal-memory usage to an absolute high !
Do I really have to go over each individual file and try delete it to see if it is referenced ? That would take me a lot of time (nearly 30.000 files in the content folder and raising) …
All your input is welcome and if this question was already asked (like I think it must be the case), any reference is appreciated and sorry for re-asking the question.
A side question is about the “Saved” folder of the project : I noticed that the folders “Autosaves”, “Cooked” and “StagedBuilds” all contain between 18 GB and 32 GB. Can I just delete these after taking a backup or should I leave these there to obtain a correct functioning of UE (after a restore for instance) ?
I haven’t found a good tool. What I do is go through all my blueprints, and attempt to delete them. When the dialog says “this blueprint is used by Xxxx” then I don’t delete it, else I delete it.
After that, save, close, re-open (to flush undo state,) and go through all meshes, and do the same.
After that, the same for animations, materials, and textures, in that order.
This is quite laborious! But, it lets me identify resources that are in the game folder, but not actually being used.
I wish there was a “find all resources with no uses” command/button somewhere. Such a thing could probably be built, but I haven’t found one.
Yes. In fact, you can delete them before you take a backup, because they are all re-generated by the editor. If you don’t back them up, and lose your hard drive, you have to spend some time re-cooking everything, but that’s not so bad.
Just tried the Migrate approach and that did cut off 6 GB, but I still am stuck with a 27 GB of content and I have seen that a large number of meshes (only looked at these) are migrated from packs where I only use one or 2 assets from …
So, unless there is another approach looping over all in all levels in the game looking for references, I think it will have to be the combination of both Burnz and jwatte
For all clarity, I deleted all other levels and only have one level at this moment in the game (for testing).
If you’ve boiled it down to one level and you still think you are getting too much packaged, then deleting things won’t help.
UE4 starts from the maps and looks up everything that is referenced, directly or indirectly, by them. That is what gets packaged. Assets in your project that are not referenced will not get packaged.
So it would seem that either everything is in fact needed, or some of the marketplace assets are referencing things they shouldn’t be. You could try using the Reference Viewer tool (right click on an asset in content browser) to see why certain things are being packaged that you don’t expect.
As for memory usage on deletion, yeah UE4 seems to have to fully load every asset you want to delete in order to check references. When you have a large content folder with many assets referencing each other, bulk deletions can be a real problem.
under packaging option, there is ‘cook only maps’. Tick this and then write the map name(s) in the list below. That only deploys content that is used in those maps and leaves everything out that is not used.
If I try to delete some folders (with large amount of content), in the “force delete” screen, I see a list of items that have a reference and how many refs. In half of these folders I don’t even have 10 % references on items, but when packaging, they are picked anyway …
The only reason I can think of, is that I deleted the maps in the windows explorer (if you have to delete all these via UE, you are busy for a day, every sold pack comes with a demo map and I have bought dozens of them - literally) and that therefore there must somehow still be a ref internally, but still I don’t get why it wouldn’t mention this in the “force delete” screen in the list of files. Again, most don’t have refs … @BlueBudgie :
I looked everywhere under packaging (in the menu and in the (project) options), but not such an option found, only in the menu “Cook content for Windows”, but that is obviously not what you meant. I use 4.11.2.
As always, glad to hear your input on this, as the best way to learn is by asking people who are much smarter !
I looked everywhere under packaging (in the menu and in the (project) options), but not such an option found, only in the menu “Cook content for Windows”, but that is obviously not what you meant. I use 4.11.2.
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You have to click on the little down arrow and unfold the menu, there you find the option (in project settings -> packaging). There is also th compressed package option etc.
Haha ! Nice, nice, did not know this ! I have this feeling that these options will have to do with another topic I started on extra packages for sale afterwards as well …
Just did a complete build and this approach really works ! Just indicate the levels you need (and even add compression if you want) and build it ! Instead of 33,5 GB deployable folder ONLY 2,49 GB ! Tested it and it all works !
Just two more questions:
1.You by accident wouldn’t know any good links, tuts or vids on localization? Haven’t found real good one so far.
2.No insight’s on subtitles for vids? No luck so far on this topic on the forum
