Why is my lighting/build performance dropping drastically after adding assets in Unreal Engine 5?

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a project in Unreal Engine 5, and I’ve recently run into a performance issue that I can’t seem to figure out. Initially, everything was running smoothly, but after I started adding more assets (meshes, materials, and some lighting adjustments), I noticed a significant drop in performance, especially when building lighting and during real-time preview.

I’m not sure if the issue is related to improper asset optimization, lighting settings, or something else entirely. I’ve already tried reducing shadow quality, adjusting LODs, and checking texture sizes, but the improvement is minimal. I’m also wondering if this could be related to Nanite, Lumen, or project scalability settings, but I don’t fully understand how to optimize them properly.

Has anyone experienced something similar? What steps would you recommend to diagnose and fix this issue? Any advice on best practices for maintaining performance while working with larger scenes would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help!