Landscape memory size on disk - questions

MysteryBlues · February 22, 2018, 5:16pm

AP_Studios:

Really the initial question is relative. (size on disk)
It depends on poly count and complexity of the landscape. Tessellation on or off? Every option has a + or - to it and will effectively add to the complexity of the landscape.
Really what your asking is “is my car fast?”. Sure, for what it is, why not?
What can you do to optimize? Doesn’t matter, you seem to think an untextured landscape with no code and no actors on it is how it will some how end-up. This landscape, in its 8k glory and size, will end your project. I can 100% tell you that right now. No need to say i am crazy, i will wait for you to have lots of code, millions of actors, foliage, etc etc to come back and say “why is my performance failing?”.
Your initial “why is this so big on disk”, like i said, is relative to the amount of poly/verts on your landscape. Not that its a single actor/mesh. Take that thought process out of your mind. When a 3D designer makes something and says “its only got 500 million poly, i dont know why this is so big in file size” >> i can tell you why.

sticking to topic *

Less resolution will lower the poly/vert count. Making less size on disk and over-all performance will get better. This doesn’t need an Epic developer to tell you the tips/tricks you need to do. I am really not sure what you are looking for to be answered here but,

Lower the res of your map

Don’t use Tess

Use auto material in a simple way. The more math it needs to do (if and or but) the more performance you will lose.

Depending on landscape size, and, your using a big area i can see, use LODs, lots of them.

If your not allowing a player to use the outer-bounds of the map, cut out those mountains and use some mesh for them with some simple material. One thing you want to stay away from is detailing the areas the player wont see, or, cant get to. No need to have millions of grass mesh if the player isn’t ever going to see it. That’s just millions of wasted overhead.

If i missed “the point” of the thread, please, let me know what the actual question is and i will be more then happy to assist you.
Open world tiles? If you have the player ability to see beyond its current tile, it will see the end of the tile. It doesn’t always work out as intended. Tiled maps, in theory, sound great. Test it out, stand on a mountain. Notice no tiles are loaded in but the one you are standing on. Talk about breaking “reality” in your game, right? Even if you extend it out, it still fails. Unless you postprocess your players ability to even see that far. Or load them all in, then, what was the point of the tiles?

Thanks for the reply, AP_Studios. But… did you read my last post above? I was not asking “is my car fast?”. It would be a very subjective question, and also not specific enough for one who is looking for technical answers with numbers, tables etc.

As I said above

I should also mention that I’ve read more then once the doc page that specify how much video memory (and memory on disk) each texture resolution takes.

Again, I’m not that un-informed about the relationship between file size and mesh complexity. I’m a 3d artist generalist with some 15 years of experience with maya, zbrush, realflow etc etc, also used to code in MEL, python, actionscript, beginner level in C++ etc etc. Of course, more vertex position vectors, normals etc to store, more memory the file will take.

Also:

You made a wrong assumption about what I was thinking. I precisely tested it without textures, landscape layers etc yet to see how much memory only the heightmap and mesh would take, to **make calculations **before even thinking about adding more stuff. But how could I know before asking more experienced users (and specially the guys who implemented the tech) if there was or not any kind of optimization in the engine code to make the landscapes use less memory?

What I was asking for was just a yes or no to 2 questions. I’ll copy paste then from the beginning of the post here:

So my first question is: is that a standard size on disk for a landscape of 8 x 8 km? (8.129 x 8.129 km, to be more specific)

I then tried importing another WM terrain into UE4, a 2017 x 2017 one, with same average resolution (1m / pixel). 2.017 x 2.017 km in WM. It takes 26.55 Mb on disk. So, I made some rough calculations, approximate values, and it gave me ~2.6 Mb / km in each side (some more, but this is close).
2.6 x 8 km = 20.8
20.8 x 20.8 = 432.64 (not 433 Mb, but close, ok to have an idea of sizes)

My second question: is this kind of a standard relationship in Mb on disk <–> Km of landscape in UE4 (if using this average resolution from WM of 1m / pixel)? And if so, is there any way we can reduce this size on disk without reducing the resolution? I need to ask this before going to reduce it.
1m / pixel (1m / terrain quad) felt ok in UE4. Less than that I fear may feel blocky, specially in sudden changes in relief.

Also, again:

I don’t intend to waste memory loading tiles for distant vistas the player won’t be walking over at all. Why should I? But again, as I said, my game concept asks for an open world. It’s intrinsic part of its gameplay mechanics. This is the reason I’m doing all these performance tests before creating the actual levels. Yes, sure I’ll use tricks for the vistas the player won’t be able to traverse.
Thanks for taking the time and all the advices, tips, really.