I have a question regarding the Variant Manager and the preview images for different sets. I have created a car configurator where different equipment options can be added using the Variant Manager. When I assign an image to a set in the Variant Manager, the image appears in very poor resolution in the UI. I haven’t found any information on this topic online.
Do someone have any idea what might be causing the low resolution of the images and have
any suggestions for a solution?
You probably (well yourr GUI) loads plenty of textures into preview material, which uses most of VRAM. So unreal starts to lower mip-maps.
So:
optimize umg textures for perviews. Make master material for preview that only uses one texture.
make all gui frames from SDF )signed distance fields) there is great example for it in UMG interface materials sample.
in preview textures lower bits per channel to 8 only. Use texture sizes in power of 2 ie. 1024x1024, 2048x1024 etc
you can also try render target from scene, and use that instead of separate textures
use only soft pointers, to textures, do not store multiple pointers to textures in array, as they will all be loaded
instead of pointers and array of references, use Data Asset that has soft pointer to textures, and store DataAssets references in array. Or data table with soft references
if you have multiple preview widgets (like for each model separate widget), make widgets only for visible preview pictures, then dynamically change texture for preview (instanced material >> dynamic instanced material >> make brush from material (for image in widget).
TL/DR:
anything that has REFERENCE to material (with texture) keeps that texture always loaded. So use soft references instead.
