Using PIX/Graphics Diagnostics from VS 2013

Has anyone reliably manage to debug a running game using PIX/Graphics Diagnostics?

Out of about 10 attempts I’ve managed to get 3 frame captures - the rest of the time I get crashes.

I’m running from the VS Solution - using the Develop (no editor) platform.

What do the unreal devs use to debug. I’ve tried the profile GPU but there’s no way to break down the draw calls to see what it being drawn in the Base Pass to identify the issue.

I would recommend checking out my plugin for renderdoc, as it works a lot better with UE4 :slight_smile:
https://github.com//UE4RenderDocPlugin

I haven’t gotten around to checking if the plugin runs well with 4.7, but renderdoc works fine even without the plugin, it just makes it a bit easier to use.
You can check out my wiki on it too:

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

Best regards,

Seconding the RenderDoc mention. It’s much more reliable and faster than VS’s built-in GPU debugging when dealing with UE4. The main caveat is that it can be tricky to capture from within the editor, since the only swap chains it sees are Slate’s, and the actual scene rendering does not seem to be reachable. So I normally capture using standalone.

But it sounds like 's plugin works around that? If so, I’ll certainly give it a shot!

That is the idea !

The plugin adds buttons to each viewport so you can control which surface is captured. After you click the viewport button it launches renderdoc with that particular capture.

Best regards,

+1 for RenderDoc, and 's awesome plugin.

Thank you AdeptStrain!

I felt a bit bad for not updating it to 4.7, so I did that now!
Here is a link to the latest branch:
https://github.com//UE4RenderDocPlugin/tree/r/UE4.7_v0.1

Best regards,

Thanks … Setting it up now.

Your wikipage says I need a beta build for RenderDoc but I dont see a beta build any later than the stable 0.23 so I’m going with that. You might want to update your wiki. I’ll let you know how it goes with UE4.7.5

Also the video link at the bottom of your wiki page is no longer valid. There’s severl others on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=renderdoc I’m going through some now but if there are any you recommend I’d be glad of a recommendation. I’m familiar with PIX and NSight so I imagine this can’t be too different.

Err, oups, updating it now >_>

This guy has a good intro and a nice series of videos - looking good so far RenderDoc - YouTube

Yeah, Baldur is an awesome guy! :smiley:
The main project source is also very frequently updated, so if you run into any problems, you can most likely expect to get the community to help out in fixing it :slight_smile:

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