Hello, we are currently working remotely with around 7 devs and artists on the same UE4-project (with SVN). Because we have some huge outdoor-sets with a lot of geos it now takes several hours to re-build static meshes and shaders. This is kind of annoying (because every time some of us updated the project via SVN that had been opened/edited by another person before this re-building starts) So i was wondering if specificly the re-building of the static meshes can be skipped or if its just something we gonna have to live with. Thank you!
As far as I am aware, if you replace or modify a mesh (For instance, move, rotate or scale it.) you will have to rebuild the lighting for that level.
One solution to reduce the time spent on rebuilding is to split the project into smaller sub-levels, so that only the necessary static meshes and shaders are rebuilt when making changes to a specific area. This can be done by organizing the project into multiple levels, and using level streaming to load the levels as needed at runtime.
Another option is to use a version control system that supports binary file deltas, such as Perforce or Git LFS. This can help reduce the amount of time spent transferring files between team members, and also reduce the amount of time spent rebuilding the project when changes are made. (This doesn’t really solve the light building however)
Finally, you could also consider using distributed or parallel build tools to speed up the build process. These tools divide the build process into smaller parts, which can be distributed across multiple machines or cores, reducing the overall build time.
Thank you Elias for that lightning fast response! Perforce is ofcourse the main-standart but not in our budget. But i didn’t know that GitLFS would do the same trick. The thing is, that Unreal ALWAYS re-builds everything (it’s hard so say since when the editor opens its hard to say which meshes from which level he is going to rebuild.) Has this also something to do which level is set to be the default-map? Lets say we have a persistant level with this huge outdoor-level as sub-level. If we just apply an empty level instead would that speed up the loading process?