UE4- What is: Scalability Shading?

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hi, long ago (UE4.19) the engine did not have the “Scalability shading” option, and until now… I have no idea what it does… setting it from low to cinematic, does absolutely nothing in any of my projects… nothing.

Another Scalability setting that does little is: “Scalability Textures” but, this one I kind of understand that it might affect transparency, reflections, etc, and since it never does nothing to my projects I keep it in “low” or “medium” to save FPS or Texture pool (if it does affects it).

But Scalability shading, I can’t even find it in the documentation, all i get is “shader” “shading models”, things like that, and finally I though to ask you guys, and finish with my “shading ignorance” , but also to understand how it can be useful to understand this concept.

Maybe these are options which are more important for Android.

2

Hay DraxFX,

  1. I’m pretty sure it changes your shader complexity (Scalability shading), so if you dont have any complex shaders or stuff like that it wont really effect your fps.

  2. Scalability Textures: this is similar to the first one but for textures, meaning that you may notice less detail is certain materials. e.g. missing bevels, low res cracks in concrete, normal maps not having as much strength.

3

You have to set up the materials yourself with with a quality switch.

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4

None change nothing, absolutely nothing, but from @MostHost_LA what I understand, is that both textures and materials need a quality switch (no idea how to make it or…why make it), in order to modify those, whenever I change the scalability settings for texture and shader, right now If I set both to “low” all my textures and materials look exactly the same, I do not have any downgrade on reflections, opacity, tessellation, normals, nothing…

that’s why I never used any of those scalability settings, and thought they where just useless.

5

You can see which Scalability group does what exactly in BaseScalability.ini in your engine folder.

“Shading” affects the Hair system, looks like if you’re not using any of this, it won’t affect your project at all. Example from the “Epic” scalability setting:

[ShadingQuality@3]
r.HairStrands.SkyLighting.IntegrationType=2
r.HairStrands.SkyAO.SampleCount=4
r.HairStrands.Visibility.MSAA.SamplePerPixel=4
r.HairStrands.Interpolation.UseSingleGuide=0

“Textures” affects mostly Texture Streaming:

[TextureQuality@3]
r.Streaming.MipBias=0
r.Streaming.AmortizeCPUToGPUCopy=0
r.Streaming.MaxNumTexturesToStreamPerFrame=0
r.Streaming.Boost=1
r.MaxAnisotropy=8
r.VT.MaxAnisotropy=8
r.Streaming.LimitPoolSizeToVRAM=0
r.Streaming.PoolSize=1000
r.Streaming.MaxEffectiveScreenSize=0

Materials are affected (via the quality switch) by the “Effects” group, if I’m not mistaken, as it contains (among many other things) the r.MaterialQualityLevel CVar:

[EffectsQuality@3]
r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=64
r.RefractionQuality=2
r.SSR.Quality=3
r.SSR.HalfResSceneColor=0
r.SceneColorFormat=4
r.DetailMode=2
r.TranslucencyVolumeBlur=1
r.MaterialQualityLevel=1 ; High quality
r.AnisotropicMaterials=1
r.SSS.Scale=1
r.SSS.SampleSet=2
r.SSS.Quality=1
r.SSS.HalfRes=0
r.SSGI.Quality=3
r.EmitterSpawnRateScale=1.0
r.ParticleLightQuality=2
r.SkyAtmosphere.AerialPerspectiveLUT.FastApplyOnOpaque=1 ; Always have FastSkyLUT 1 in this case to avoid wrong sky
r.SkyAtmosphere.AerialPerspectiveLUT.SampleCountMaxPerSlice=4
r.SkyAtmosphere.AerialPerspectiveLUT.DepthResolution=16.0
r.SkyAtmosphere.FastSkyLUT=1
r.SkyAtmosphere.FastSkyLUT.SampleCountMin=4.0
r.SkyAtmosphere.FastSkyLUT.SampleCountMax=128.0
r.SkyAtmosphere.SampleCountMin=4.0
r.SkyAtmosphere.SampleCountMax=128.0
r.SkyAtmosphere.TransmittanceLUT.UseSmallFormat=0
r.SkyAtmosphere.TransmittanceLUT.SampleCount=10.0
r.SkyAtmosphere.MultiScatteringLUT.SampleCount=15.0
fx.Niagara.QualityLevel=3

See also Scalability documentation (but yeah, like most UE4 documentation, it doesn’t cover everything): Scalability Reference | Unreal Engine Documentation

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