UE 5.4.4 - slow material updates?

Development Getting Started & Setup
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I’m just getting started with UE right now, but running into some issues with materials in UE 5.4.4. If I make the most basic material, apply it to an object, and make a change like updating the color, I see very slow times in:

  • The material preview viewport updating. Sometimes it goes to a default texture for 4-5 seconds before finally reflecting the change.
  • Saving/applying the material. A popup appears that says “Apply changes to original material and its use in the world” with a progress bar stuck at 100% for about 10 seconds before finally resolving and making the update.

Both of these issues are fairly consistent, but there are times where it randomly does instantly update/apply the changes.

I’ve tested this in UE 5.3.2. There is no slowdown. I’ve seen a post or two on Reddit of others experiencing this, but no thoughts as to why it’s so much different.

Is this a universal problem that people are just tolerating, or is there something I can change in 5.4.4 to improve the speed?

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I see this also. I can’t really quantify it, but there are other times when the engine / editor hangs for too long on simple operations.

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I’m seeing the same issue in UE 5.5. It is very frustrating. Clicking Apply on a material results in the editor hanging with the “Apply changes to original material…” message for about 60 seconds. This makes iterating on materials so painful. I feel like this issue has only started in recent versions of UE.

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Yeah, it’s still been super annoying. It’s like the shader recompiling process gets delayed. I’ve noticed other oddities that I suspect are related too, where there seems to be a random delay before stuff starts loading in / painting / refreshing / etc for the first time.

For materials, the main workaround I’ve had to do is anytime I’m trying to tweak a value to dial in to the right setting, I parameterize it. Once it’s parameterized, tweaking the parameter gives much quicker feedback.