I have been struggling to find why I have over 2Gb of non-streaming textures listed in STAT STREAMING. Filtering textures with never stream == true, I have verified that all textures should be streaming so it shouldnt be that. There is only some substance textures left, but those should take only 100mb at most. I cant get the LISTTEXTURES command working so very out of ideas what is causing that insane load. On empty test map there is already 700mb non-streaming textures and once loading my big Project map (few km^2 divided to 16 streaming levels), it gets to 2,3Gb. I am using dynamic lighting only, force no precomputed lighting is on, using distance field shadows, no precompute visibility.
Very lost what could be causing the load. Is there still some shadow data store in GPU that I could make lower resolution?
From what i know substance files can’t streaming, so the full amount of MB is always loaded into your vram. You can reduce the vram usage and make substance textures streaming by baking them out in the editor, there is a option somewhere in the editor preferences.
For testing purpose i would create a simple color material in UE4, than simply align your color material to all your props “meshes” basically replace all the substnace textures you are uisng in your scene by it.
After that check you vram usage again.
By baking them out i mean you can bake the substance files in regular texture files and materials, this way they take less vram.
If you go into your project settings and go to the Substance Plugin settings, you can configure how substances are loaded.
You can from there set them to be baked, so when packaging your project they will load just like simple textures.
Like i wrote before, for testing purpose change the substnace textures on your probs with a simple color material to check if your vram usage will go down.
You can also export all your txtures from SP or SD as simple textures. For streaming of Substnace files you should go to the substnace forums and read about it. But i’m 99% sure
that substance files can’t be streamed.
Thanks will try these. The size map for substance assets is bit over 500mb so should be able to free some ram there. There is still more than 1,7Gb unknown so if some more theories appear let me know.
Edit: But cant also find how to bake wanted material or texture out. Export makes only .COPY or .T3D, dont know how to edit those.
If you like to know exactly how big your substance files are “extracted” take a look in your content folder of your project where the substnace files are stored.
I never baked them out in UE4, how the baking or let’s say the options have to be set, is a good question for the substance forum
The whole substance seems to be leaking. Got suddently 600mb more over budjet. It reset better again when restarting editor. Will continue waiting 4.11 if its better.
Removed 3 my own materials made of one tga picture each. Seems like each substance material costs around 50mb GPU memory even the sizemap showed 2mb total :D. If the street barrier and vehicle pack vol.1 assets work the same way. The remaining mysterious GPU memory loss could be hiding there.
Will need to get better GPU card next summer with at least 6Gb for editor. Still not bad if the baked Project will not have the same issue. Would try project baking but that seem to be broken in 4.10.
If you are using street barrier meshes “props” with substnace materials, simply set the substance resolution to 1024 x 1024, make your barrier “prop” the way you like it to have, dirt, scratches, color etc… After that bake the textures out in UE4, there is no need to buy a card with bigger memory, simply use your materials clever and you can reduce your vram usage massive.
The values you see in the editor for your substnace materials are for some reason not right, i have the same vram usage of 50 Mb for a standard substance material, thats why you need to bake them out to simple textures.
However the Substance materials are so big because they are using a greyscale compression in UE4 which results in a better quality. When importing simple textures people usually leave the compression for they’re greyscale textures as standard, which makes you greyscale material a way smaler but at the same time you are loosing a bit of quality.
Have you bought SD or SP or just a content pack from the marketplace with substance materials ?
@Roccini, Are you using substance materials too ? If not i think your problem is different from saoks.
Substance materials didn’t stream and they are bigger than regular textures becasue of the grayscale compression for metalic and roughness textures.
Thanks, maybe its somehow related since sounds like very similar issue. Any guesses are welcome too. Unless mine problem is 100% substance. I haved got SP or SD, but purchased the UE4 Bitmap2Material when it was 50% off. Currently I have only substance materials from those those marketplace asset. Removed my own B2M for now (anyway those can be remade in few mins). Havent managed to find out how to bake out the materials unless you need to bake whole Project, but that have been failing for me in 4.10. Will keep looking for it tomorrow.
I don’t have B2M for UE4, but i think it should allow you to save textures from your Substance files in UE4. If this is the case, you could simply change a substance material the way you like it and than simply save the textures out from the substance file through B2M.
POM materials seem to leak GPU memory too in 4.10.2. Made one more POM material and GPU got over 60mb more hit. Removed two POM materials and got 100mb more. :S All used textures should stream. Some very stange stuff going.
The size map for substance assets is bit over 500mb so should be able to free some ram there. There is still more than 1,7Gb unknown so if some more theories appear let me know. 
