UE4.3 Compiling Shaders still really slow

Development Asset Creation
, ,
1

Hi,

I know that this was an issue in 4.1, but I’ve been having this same problem in 4.2 and 4.3 as well as 4.1.1 and 4.0.2.

Compiling shaders would take a really long time – minutes, usually, even in simple scenes and even when editing some very basic materials.

I’ve tried the usual uninstall/reinstall routine, as well as various versions of UE4. I’ve also tried updating drivers.

I’ve also tried turning off Windows Defender, as well as installing both UE and my projects on different disks.

Any ideas?

My specs: Win 8.1 x64, AMD Phenom II X4 955, 8GB DDR3, AMD Radeon 7900 series (7980, I think)

2

Does a single shader take really long or do you have some 10-30k shaders that need compiling?

3

When I change my (very, very simple material), it starts at around 80 and takes a couple minutes.

4

Use material instances. and parameter values They allow you to use “parameter” values in materials which are changed over the instance. This means the changes are instant and you don’t need to recompile. (you assign the material instance to the object)

5

Even then I don’t think it should take so long, should it? I mean, even with just a vector connected to the Base Color, it takes 10+ seconds.

6

Yeah thats normal, it has to recompile the material and depending on how many things share that material, it will take longer. For example, a change in my tiled landscape material takes about 10-15 min with 30k recompiles…

7

It’s ridiculously fast in this video… an action like this takes about 10 seconds on my computer, here it’s a few video frames. Someone in the comment mentions that it’s just because his CPU is slower, but somehow I doubt that’s the only issue… at most my CPU should be a few times slower, not few tens of times.

8