Stop guessing. Start seeing.
Material Complexity Visualizer transforms the Material Editor into a real-time performance dashboard. Every wire in your material graph is colored by estimated shader cost — white means cheap, red means expensive. No more blind optimization. No more guessing which nodes hurt performance.
🔥 WHAT YOU GET
• Heatmap Wires — Every connection colored by cost, updated in real-time
• Cost Labels — Numeric values displayed directly on wires
• 6 Analysis Modes — Total, ALU, Samples, Dependent, Flow, Feature Penalty
• Interactive Tooltip — Hover any wire for a detailed cost breakdown
• Legend with Hotspots — See the color scale and top expensive nodes ranked
• Click-to-Navigate — Jump directly to problem nodes from the Hotspots list
• Full Material Function Support — Costs propagate correctly through functions
📊 ANALYSIS MODES
TOTAL — Weighted combination of all metrics. Start here for an overview.
ALU — Arithmetic operations: math, lerp, power, sine, fresnel. Find heavy computation chains.
SAMPLES — Texture fetches. Essential for mobile and bandwidth-limited platforms.
DEPENDENT — Dependent texture reads. The hidden performance killer that breaks GPU parallelism.
FLOW — Static switches and branching. Understand shader permutation complexity.
FEATURE PENALTY — Material features overhead: translucency, refraction, subsurface, two-sided.
⚡ WHY MCV?
Traditional profiling requires compiling shaders, launching PIX/RenderDoc, and hunting through assembly. MCV shows you hotspots instantly, right where you work — in the Material Editor.
• See problems as you build, not after you ship
• Compare materials using Absolute normalization
• Understand WHY something is expensive, not just that it is
• Zero runtime overhead — editor-only plugin
🎨 CUSTOMIZABLE
• 3 Normalization modes: P95 (recommended), Max, Absolute
• Configurable gradient colors with presets (Neon, Base) or custom
• Adjustable metric weights for Total mode
• Wire label font size and shadow settings
• All settings in Editor Preferences
✅ PRODUCTION READY
• Supports Unreal Engine 5.0 – 5.5+
• Non-destructive — never modifies your materials
• Tested on complex materials (100-200+ nodes)
• Clean codebase, no experimental features
📖 DOCUMENTATION
Full documentation included:
• Getting Started guide
• Complete Usage reference
• Troubleshooting guide
TECHNICAL DETAILS:
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Supported Engine Versions: 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 5.7
Supported Platforms: Windows 64-bit (Editor only)
Module Type: Editor
Network Replicated: No (Editor-only plugin)
Documentation: Included
KEYWORDS / TAGS:
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material, shader, complexity, performance, optimization, profiler, heatmap, cost, visualization, debug, editor tool, tech art, GPU