Hi everyone!
I’m currently working on an open-world project using Unreal Engine 5, and it includes a lot of trees, bushes, and foliage assets. However, when I build the scene, the performance drops quite a bit — especially when Nanite and Lumen are enabled.
Does anyone have experience or tips on how to optimize foliage-heavy scenes effectively while still keeping good visual quality?
Would really appreciate any advice
Foliage (Leaves/Grass) needs to use Masked instead of Transparency. This eliminates overdraw.
Foliage should not use Nanite.
Large foliage (trees) needs to have 4-5 LoDs
Sizeable bushes need roughly 3-4 LoDs
Grass should come in 4-5 different clumps sizes and also use LoDs. Larger clumps can be rendered further (less culling). While smaller clumps are used for close up details.
Adjust culling distances and LoD screen size for each mesh.
Minimize the number of material instances used for each mesh.
Pack textures to reduce the number of samples used for each material.
Check your texture resolutions. 4K res will crush a scene pretty quickly.