Let's Build the RPG! - 10 - How to Improve Foliage Performance in Unreal Engine 5

In this episode we cover every trick I've got for improving foliage performance while preserving the quality and the look and feel of your scene. In the final 10 minutes we focus on the common aesthetic issues you'll see with your foliage assets and how to fix them.
Link to spreadsheet of all meshes and materials used so far in this series (as of episode 10):
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
00:00 Intro
00:15 Today's Goals and Key Concepts
02:21 Baseline FPS - 80 FPS
02:47 How to get the assets used this episode for free
03:08 Painting dense foliage along the edge of a river
05:19 Current FPS Assessment: 67 FPS
05:30 Painting the water quadrant with foliage (next quadrant of our garden level)
07:00 Current FPS Assessment: 35 FPS (low point)
07:37 Foliage PERFORMANCE Improvement Technique 1: Scaling up foliage assets and scaling down paint density
09:20 Current FPS Assessment: 50 FPS (15 FPS improvement)
09:52 Foliage PERFORMANCE Improvement Technique 2: Cull Distances
14:13 Current FPS Assessment: 59 FPS (9 FPS improvement)
15:19 Overview of LOD (Level of Detail)
16:29 Billboard Material (final LOD)
17:02 Contrasting lower and higher density (poly count- triangles and vertices) static meshes
18:09 Foliage PERFORMANCE Improvement Technique 3: Upping the minimum LOD
19:15 Foliage PERFORMANCE Improvement Technique 4: Cutting the total # of high poly assets in the scene compared to lower poly assets
20:16 Current FPS Assessment: 69 FPS (10 FPS improvement)
20:47 Scaling up size and painting fewer red fountain grass assets in garden water quadrant
23:36 Foliage AESTHETIC Issue fix 1: Adjusting the camera size threshold for the switch to the Billboard material
26:54 Foliage AESTHETIC issue fix 2: Brightness (color) change of the billboard material
27:38 Painting edges of garden water quadrant
29:04 Foliage AESTHETIC issue fix 3: Brightness (color) of the asset doesn't match the rest of the assets in the scene
30:05 Foliage AESTHETIC issue fix 4: Foliage growing in the wrong direction (align to normal)
30:53 Finishing up painting and aesthetic fixes for edges of garden water quadrant
32:14 Final FPS and quality test
32:38 Foliage AESTHETIC issue fix 5: Foliage wind settings
33:59 Foliage AESTHETIC issue fix 6: Rebuilding LOD's (fixing foliage LOD glitches)
35:21 Summary Slide: Techniques for Improving Foliage Performance
35:33 Summary Slide: Techniques for Improving Foliage Aesthetics
35:37 Conclusion and preview of next episode
New episode released every Saturday morning!
Direct References
Fixing 'Texture Streaming Pool Over Budget' error:
www.techarthub.com/fixing-tex...
How Instanced Heirarchical Meshes work:
www.undeaddev.com/lets-play-w...
General References
Quixel Bridge: quixel.com/bridge (comes automatically with UE5)
Megascans: quixel.com/megascans
What's the relationship between Quixel Bridge and Megascans?
Bridge is basically the tool for bringing it into UE5, Megascans is the library.
Official documentation on Foliage:
docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en...
Official documentation on performance:
docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en...
We will continue to cover performance in many episodes. The implications of performance (and the goal of improving performance without sacrificing the quality of the experience) is universal across many aspects of a game.
Official documentation on LOD's:
docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en...
docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en...
Music used this episode:
California - MusicbyAden
Horizons - Roa
Bubble - KV
Desire - MusicbyAden
Roa - Remember
Playa - Mauro Somm
Amelia - Amine Maxwell
This Feeling - Atch
Stable - KV
Pineapple - JayJen
We've Got Time - LiQWYD
Ardent - Pratzapp
Journey - Atch
Sunray valley - Scandinavianz
Ready for Summer - Roa

[@NumenBrothers]

Just want to mention that with the advent of 5.1 Nanite foliage, LOD's are largely irrelevant for performance improvement. But the rest of this episode is still relevant post 5.1.

[@gridtac2911]

Definitely still viable for those of us working on VR where nanite and lumen are not extremely reliable or just not even supported on the forward renderer :).

[@adsCrazyDiamond]

Also worth mentioning that there are still issues with Nanite foliage in 5.1 that are not resolved yet... 1. wind will act extremely strange and has to be set to very low levels in order to not look truly ridiculous in some cases. 2. you are unable in some cases to select individual foliage to adjust rotation and transform through the foliage mode .. what happens is selecting an individual foliage through foliage mode 'select' results in some other piece of foliage half way across your level being high-lighted/selected/transformed. These issues can be confirmed by using the "r.Nanite 0" command line to turn off all nanite and doing your foliage select and edits then "r.Nanite 1" to re-enable nanite. ... this also instantly fixes the very strange wind effects that occur if nanite is enabled on foliage and your wind isn't set to very very low settings. I still use nanite with foliage despite these issues though. Its not really that bad to turn wind way down, it still looks the same as normal wind settings once its reduced.

[@craftedterrains3036]

For the Areca Palms wind: Wind Intensity: 0.031 Wind Height: 5.62 Wind speed: 0.31 That'll give you nice breeze look on them :)

[@pic0_enri]

i figured out you can set the cull distance and angle in the foliage mode in the left down corner. so u can select the foliage and for all selectet you can change the culldistance in that corner and see the realtime change. so you dont have to go in every foliage and set the cull distance.

[@AndyKysoSliac]

about the blurry foliage with wind - I found they should be set to [Mobility > Movable] in painting setting, and that did the trick for me :) also about the FPS - I set LODs in foliage Mesh to Max 8 and Applied change to generate automatic LODs and that significantly boosted my FPS :)

[@NumenBrothers]

Oh man, awesome trick! I had no idea about that. Looks much better for my trees. Much appreciated!

[@paulshelkov7956]

I never even had that from the start. New version?

[@mridulsarmah5974]

Even with nanite foliage, virtual shadows can cause serious loss of performance especially in a forested/large environments. So it's better to use LOD system whenever possible and using nanite foliage only on the hero assets that are always close to camera.

[@GatlinGames]

I am excited! A quick recap, last year I got through this video and due to poor FPS I went no further. I came back this year once I upgraded my graphic card and this time my FPS is just under 90 FPS at the completion of this video, much better than the 30 to 40 FPS I was getting about 8 to 9 months ago when I took a break from this project. I am excited to press forward to the next stage of this project. Lesson 11 here I come! 🤗

[@adaptivegame9353]

It worked out great! There are several adjustments. First, you forgot to say about the important setting of LODs. This is the shadow casting setting for each LOD value. You can turn off shadow casting for distant LODs. Second, you didn't say anything about LOD Groups. Depending on the selected group, automatic LODs are calculated differently. But, the best recommendation would be, manual setting for LOD distances.

[@Duskyberry]

Excellent presentation, easy to understand, thank you!

[@viks9759]

Hey, recently started working with Unreal Engine. I must say, this has helped me a LOT. For me, performance is everything. So i rather focus first on performance rather then later..so BIG THANK YOU. Sub for sure!

[@iliaroger7010]

Great video, helped me out a lot!

[@DuneGames]

Good episode, but I was confused at the beginning. At 3:50 you have us remove all the foliage you seemingly ask us at 6:00 to select and use. Which is it, remove them or not? Perhaps add a note to the video to ignore the remove at that point?

[@NumenBrothers]

ahh I definitely messed that up- appreciate it. If I add a note to the video I have to re-upload. What I'll do is a pin a comment to the top of the comments for the video- hopefully folks see it. I appreciate you calling it out!

[@paulshelkov7956]

For the tedious 'Cull Distance' part, being able to open the content door over the asset details helped a lot. I was able to open up a folder of foliage, copy the minimum, then ctrl+space the door -> ctrl+V the value, double the click next one, and just quickly go down the line and then do it again for the max.

[@paulshelkov7956]

Apparently there's a far better way... at least consider it for any tedious tasks. You can select a bunch of assets -> right click -> asset actions -> bulk edit via property matrix. This will let us change a setting across all the selected items at once.

[@dirtypawse]

@@paulshelkov7956 To add to that - clicking the main palette folder and applying a filter for static mesh foliage will give you all the items that you want to update in one folder view for the bulk edit

[@charlesjoy7321]

Fantastic video. Thank you

[@corgilife241]

Great stuff!! I love the series!!

[@NumenBrothers]

Your words power me forward :)

[@NumenBrothers]

Dune Games pointed out something important- make sure at the 3:50 mark you don't remove the extra content. Keep it around because we paint with it at the 6:00 mark.

[@alexschmidt7326]

Good Work 👍

[@cwill1337]

If you're looking for a way to quickly change the Screen Size setting for multiple billboard material, consider this, you can change the setting for one material manually then right click that material in the content drawer and navigate to the Level of Detail menu and select Copy LOD. Then just select all the other material and paste those LOD settings in the same way you copied them using the paste option.

[@dodgemastersama]

Nah I had LOTS of fun. It's fun learning and solving problems. This was great. Been having trouble with adding trees to the scene and it's lagging. There are so many settings all around so this really pointed at many different possible areas to play around with.

[@jd-foo]

Subscribed!

[@kadircebel]

thanks

[@Jewfro1138]

Your channel name is NumenBrothers, are you twins that take it in turns recording or? Loving the series so far :)

[@NumenBrothers]

Glad you're finding it useful! I was aiming for a creative brotherhood, but I ended up finding the brotherhood I was looking for elsewhere.

[@Jewfro1138]

@@NumenBrothers glad you found what you're looking for, may I ask what that brotherhood is. I've been looking for a "brotherhood" too but everywhere I look is mostly people demanding help or just wanting answers and there's no sense of actual community or brotherhood

[@NumenBrothers]

Here's my story. kzbin.info/www/bejne/kGrbgYd5n9lrrNk Happy to talk if you would like to reach out via email (can be found on my main channel page).

[@NumenBrothers]

@@Jewfro1138 in short, instead of starting from a common set of interests (game development) and then attempting to bond over an idea/values, I started with a common set of values, and then proceeding to the interest. Not all of us are gentiles, by the way! 😅

[@Jewfro1138]

@@NumenBrothers Listening to it now :)

[@royjordi7950]

i always get issue with the foliage texture. when i export it from quixel bridge, the texture not automatically compiled into material sphere so i have to create the new material sphere but the result is not so good. the leaf not so realistic. do you have any refference how to do the leaf material node in ue?

[@NumenBrothers]

Hey Roy, if you like, you could join our Discord on Fridays, 6-7pm EST, and there's a little brain trust we have where we can help troubleshoot issues. Typically these sorts of things are best figured out if you can show it in real time. The link to the Discord, if you would like to join: discord.gg/U8pCkkUmSN

[@paulshelkov7956]

Even after following all your tweaks, I see my foliage flickering a lot (at relatively short distances). Maybe it is switching the billboard and I'm underestimating how soon it does that, but looks like the whole asset is shifting it's position noticeably. If it's the billboard, yeah in most cases that 2D image just won't be lined up with its 3D orientation. I'm about to update to 5.1 so I wonder if that LOD change will change anything.

[@NumenBrothers]

Certainly- I recommend updating to 5.1 and switching to Nanite foliage for all assets. And then the LOD's cease to be an issue.

[@kalingaanimationstudio]

I am looking for this tutorial for long time ... After searching 50 video i found my problem solve

[@nicholasnovello485]

I literally just open up new Level in 5.1 and my FPS is drifting in the 30's from the start, no foliage or anything hahah ,,,, HOW DO YOU GET 60 FPS??? Love you work bro!!

[@NumenBrothers]

3080 Ti. Luckily GPU's are getting less expensive with each passing day.

[@nicholasnovello485]

@@NumenBrothers got my eye on the RTX 4060.

[@TolisPiperas82]

i cant set the lod settings of foliage. i cant click on them

[@Axel0689]

More and more interesting and useful tutorials, bravo! Unfortunately for me since Episode 9, my FPS has dropped to 15. Downloading several resources in Nanite (which are in 8K) took up quite a bit of my space. And they slowed me down. So I am performing the same things in 2K (Medium). In addition, Foliage also weighs and not a little. 😭😭😭😭

[@NumenBrothers]

What are your hardware specs? CPU, RAM, GPU

[@Axel0689]

@@NumenBrothers Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3060 12GB, Vengeance 16GB DDR4 3200Mhz RAM, 1TB SSD.

[@NumenBrothers]

Those are decent specs- shouldn't drop your FPS that much. Maybe down to 40-50, perhaps even 30, but not 15. It could be the sheer size of your level, if it's a lot larger than mine. Make sure you have the 'Nanite' checkbox checked for all foliage assets. @@Axel0689

[@Axel0689]

@@NumenBrothers If you are referring to the size of the landscape, it is the same. Because I followed it step by step the playlist so far.

[@NumenBrothers]

@@Axel0689 Can you try turning on detailed stats like this tutorial? And check to see what 'bar' (what color) is the highest bar, taking up the most system resources. Is it the yellow for GPU? red for CPU? etc. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pILHpIxolpJ5pJo

[@prototypega8257]

You could Improve if you use Instanced Static Mashes handle the Collision in the Material ore you handle the hole Foliage thing in Niagara.

[@NumenBrothers]

Can you elaborate on this? Or an example you can point me toward?

[@prototypega8257]

@@NumenBrothers Actualy not that easy to find but it´s this PRinzip kzbin.info/www/bejne/eaK7fIavdrWKkLs the Result is seen in 28:25

[@prototypega8257]

@@NumenBrothers But the cheapest MEthod i currently work on is to spawn GPU Ribbon Particle in NIagara and if needed a static Mash particle. I currently try to figure that out for an Hair creater, becouse the Groom Performance and toi import it sucks. I have perfect fps with 250.000 hairs with 4 links , (just have a GTX 1080) but i hadn´t test more. As i created a GBuffer i was rendering close every pixel as a Particle and still no problam. Something like this are examples for G Buffer kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4i5nKV8aKhqb9E

[@TolisPiperas82]

Every rock i add from quixel are blur when i import them in the game

[@NumenBrothers]

Texture streaming over budget isn't the issue? kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXjJeWx4e7CKe8U

[@user-rg4xb8pi7y]

что за модели травы , откуда они ? скачать где-то можно ?

[@KRob811]

All of them are on Quixel Bridge. He provides a Google sheet with all of the asset IDs in the description of each video.

[@jacare2541]

is worth using nanite in foliage?

[@NumenBrothers]

yes absolutely. This tutorial was made before Nanite foliage existed. But all the tips are still useful in combination with Nanite foliage.

[@jacare2541]

okk thanks for answering👍

[@2BRE-]

first rule of performance, WE DO NOT MEASURE FPS IN THE EDITOR, it is a distorted value that is not reflected in the build!

[@NumenBrothers]

My desire to know more intensifies

[@ryanplaysguitar5537]

Your computer may not have emotions but it has an expensive GPU

[@NumenBrothers]

thankfully Moore's Law is not completely dead, and thus growing less and less expensive over time

[@user58180]

ur videos too long

[@VenthorGaming]

So....I've been fighting with Unreal 5.3.2 and down to 5.1. When I try to move assets within the project or via windows explorer my materials, meshes and textures need reapplied and then they crash. If I download from the Quixel Bridge and in the default folders I'm fine. I've also had multiple crashes with collisions on the rocks. Right now I'm using 5.2.1 with direct x11 even though I have a very high machine (4090 ti, etc). One hint to turn the Foliage to Nanite is to download them in highest quality then before you close the folder, highlight the static meshes and right click. You will then be able to switch them all in one shot to Nanite. @NumenBrothers this is a great series and while I've done C++/Blueprints in UE 4, these landscape and foliage tutorials are great for a non-artist developer like myself. Also, can you put a non-expiring link to your discord in your youtube about/help. I found one reference, but the link was expired. Thanks for all your work on this!

[@NumenBrothers]

Discord was not giving rise to the 'spirit' I hoped to instill. Maybe next time. Glad I could help.