HI guys,
I have 4 machines setup for a lightmass swarm, which Ive finally got running…
However, it seems that 3 of the 4 machines finish their “chunk” quite quickly, and 1 machine is left (at about the 92% mark) with 4hours of work to do on its own?
Wondering if maybe Ive set it up wrong? Seems pointless when 3 computers are finished in 2mins, and 1 is left for hours doing the rest?
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
I don’t have very deep insight into Swarm and Lightmass but from my own experience,the reason for this is when you have a few objects with very large lightmap sizes (2048+) Those take quite a bit of time to compute.
If possible, split the object up into smaller chunks, so they can be processed in a distributed manner.
Or do a better unwrap with more padding so you can lower the lightmap resolution without getting artifacts from bleeding due to mip mapping. (of course this will result in fewer pixels that are actually visible on the object)
Thanks for that - Im still a newbie, and not coming from a gaming background, this sure is a steep learning curve…
Is the inference that the lightmass processor processes per-object? So if I have one extremely large/complex object (like intanced foliage trees for instance) it will export that for processing as one huge chunk?
Yes, i think so. each static mesh actor = 1 object to process that gets distributed in the Swarm, but i think the trees, if static, are not like combined into 1 large chunk, they are 1 object each, because they are still in different lighting situations etc.
If you open the “Build” menu → "Lighting Info "-> “Lighting Static Mesh Info” you can sort all your static meshes according to their lightmap resolution. For testing purposes, try and reduce every static mesh actor down to max. 1024. Also if you did not do this already, use power of two lightmap sizes. If this results in way faster baking for you, then you should split up some meshes if you are missing detail in some places. For example if you have a large floor with 4k lightmap because you wanted to have nice smooth shadows, split the mesh between doors or where appropriate. and set each part 512pixels 
