With many of us in our own, unique work from home situations, we’d like to share a few resources that may help:
Feel free to share what you’ve learned and/or adopted in your workflow!
Tip:
Low-tech alternative to ^^ that ^^… But it might help someone in similar circumstances. For example, devs who don’t have time to deal with all the security aspects of remote access, or devs who are traveling right now and can’t guarantee access will work at the destination, or for devs who are quarantined without net access etc.
Had a trip coming up… But with all the corona-mania madness, I didn’t want to bring production gear in case of being trapped in places with no security (stuck in quarantine in a rundown hostel etc). So I tried to source a 2nd-hand cheap PC…
I got hold of a refurbished low-spec laptop, normally only good for web-browsing (dual boot Win7 / Ubuntu). But I tried installing UE4.18 on there anyway, along with a couple of projects just to see, and voila it worked. The stability of 4.18 seems to be key here… In one test, I got 7 FPS versus 40+ FPS on a production rig, but it works!
Conclusions:
Hardware is 64-bit, but otherwise specs are way below minimums: I5 / Intel graphics / 8GB Ram / 128GB SSD (of which only 40GB was available). Obviously working with source is out and the editor UX isn’t great (single small screen). But if you can get by working mostly in Blueprints / Level editor / Material editor, then its passable. Cost is a 10th of the price of a production rig, so if anything happens to it - no tears! So if remote access is looking uncertain, maybe a low spec laptop will get you through. Who knew UE4 would even run…
BTW:
For using XGE over VPN:
Make sure to compensate for sitting extended periods of time. Thus, preferably have a working environment which also features a desk where you can stand while working. Go outside from time to time, ideally do some sort of physical activity. Try to eat healthy, general health advisories apply. If you stay in good condition, your endurance, overall fitness, it will reflect to some degree on the outcome of your work. This is especially of importance if you getting older.
Hey folks.
We’ve written a small plugin to help reduce editor load times whilst working from home. It’s available for free on GitHub. We use the automation system to load maps in the editor, runs Play In Editor for each map, and allows you to run console commands from here.
If you configure it to load the maps you generally use on a day-to-day basis, you should very rarely get hampered by waiting for shaders etc.
The idea is that you schedule to run this after syncing from source control each night, and when you start work in the morning, shaders etc will have already been built.
I wrote a blog post about it here. There are also some other tips for how to precache your ddc.
https://www.studiogobo.com/our-news/…unreal-engine/
We hope that this helps some of you.
/Terry
Try to get a separate room as your workspace and treat it as an office. Be punctual with your time, it gets little harder in start but once you get familiar you love work from home jobs. You just needs to be Punctual in it
It is better to organize your workplace not in a kitchen because your fridge is going to disturb you. Besides getting punctual and following a work regime I would recommend getting dressed like you do while working in an office. You shouldn’t feel too relaxed while working from home, so it is definitely not a good idea to work in a lying position.
I work for one of the big car companies as a virtual prototype engineer creating models in NX and rendering them in videos using software like C4D, Maya and Daz Studio. Been working from home since Mar, 2017 well before the lockdown because the company won’t get my a decent work station. My current company work station has a GPU from 2016. Been forced to use my gaming rigs to render stuff. My latest rig has 2 RTX 2080TI’s. Whatever you do, don’t work in your living room on your sofa using a 65" 4K TV as the monitor. The sofa has a big dent in it where I’ve sit 12 to 16 hrs a day and my back is really messed up. And can also say my eyes are really messed up as well because my work routine is basically equivalent to watching TV for 12 to 16 hrs day. Use a desk with a PC monitor that’s not too big. Whenever I get stressed out due to work or the isolation I feel, I take a 5 minute break to watch funny Youtube videos.