WaveWorks Infinite Ocean Planes

[N8128]

@DigiTecK3D;638070

N8128, Thank you so much for a more thorough explanation on the issue! This will help greatly and hopefully anyone else that comes after us to save them a load of time tracking down this issue. We where suspecting it had something to do with that new ::NeedsLoadForClient() function but where dumb founded as to why it was happening and its nice to get an explanation on why the cooker is stripping out the assets. It all makes more sense now why it had been happening in the 4.12.5 build and not in the 4.9.2 builds.

So I’m starting to assume that the ::NeedsLoadForClient() function can’t be overwritten just for the MaterialExpressionWaveworks.h because all the other expressions run the same check and fail and strip out on cook as well? So now I also see and understand why you are saying we have to change it on a global scale at the root level for UMaterialExpression.

bool UMaterialExpressionWaveWorks::NeedsLoadForClient() const
{
    // We need the asset cooked
    return true;
}

You are correct about doing it only in WaveWorks, it will break other expression because they are not linked to any valid texture reference, so the same check fails as you’ve said. I’ve planned on replying to point out the specifics on doing this, but you figured it out before, so glad it helped!

@Avicr;641720

I have fixed the wave works material expression being cooked out by returning true in NeedsLoadForClient(), but the wave works asset still will not show in a cooked build. The cooked build crashes after a “random” amount of time somewhere in either an nvidia dll, or D3D11 itself. This leads me to believe some wave works RHI or other render resource is not being setup correctly during cooked build execution. Any other tips you can provide?

The crash is caused by parallel renderer, here’s my solution, taken from another email of mine:

"The reason was that in UE 4.12, Epic changed randerer to issue draw calls in parallel by default: “New: Changed PC to default to parallel rendering when not in editor.”. This change is in “WindowsPlatform.h” the “#define PLATFORM_RHITHREAD_DEFAULT_BYPASS 1” changed to “#define PLATFORM_RHITHREAD_DEFAULT_BYPASS WITH_EDITOR” this propages to console variable “CVarRHICmdBypass” in “RHICommandList.cpp” and undirectly enables parallel algorithms. I just use console command “r.RHICmdBypass” and set it to 1 to disable parallel algorithms as was the default until now. I’ve encountered this before and that helped me a lot to figure this one out. "

So to sum it up. Go to “\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Public\Windows\WIndowsPlatform.h” and change “#define PLATFORM_RHITHREAD_DEFAULT_BYPASS WITH_EDITOR” to “#define PLATFORM_RHITHREAD_DEFAULT_BYPASS 1” OR probably even better, leave it as it is and change this in the config files or in blueprints with command “r.RHICmdBypass 1”, the important thing is that you turn off the parallel renderer before WaveWorks gets initialized and used. Hope it helps!