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1-hour of Unreal GPU Optimization Tips & Tricks

Tom Looman

66,212 views

Learn Unreal Engine Optimization: https://courses.tomlooman.com/p/unrea...

Join me as I dive into the Dark Ruins Environment and optimize the scene for GPU performance. This tutorial walkthrough focuses on a variety of optimizations including Nanite, Virtual Shadow mapping, and Lumen!

Timestamps
4:30 - Virtual Shadow Mapping
13:50 - Culling Niagara GPU Particles
24:35 - Optimizing Content Settings
37:50 - Ab-testing
41:00 - Optimizing Light Sources
52:30 - Scalability through DetailMode
53:35 - Fixing the blurriness (Tonemapper Sharpen)
56:35 - Optimizing Nanite VisBuffer (MaxPixelsPerEdge)

Disclaimer: This sample was made by Quixel to provide super high-end visuals, and they delivered. They have stated that performance wasn’t really their primary focus, and this project had a quick turnaround time. So clearly no shade to Quixel regarding perf, it’s an incredibly beautiful sample that is a great playground for us to start optimizing and scaling down to lower end hardware.

Learn more UE5: https://tomlooman.com

20 Comments

@tom.looman Creator 1 year ago Pinned

Watch me explore and optimize the new Dark Ruins sample by Quixel. This is an hour of unscripted talking about performance, for things that almost certainly will apply to your own game environments!

The ultimate goal is to run this on much lower hardware than it was intended for, if this series proves to be a success. Let me know in the comments if you want this to be more scripted, or anything else really!

If you want to deep dive game optimization for UE5, I got you covered! I have launched a game performance course that you can check out right here: https://courses.tomlooman.com/p/unrealperformance

@sknfdskfm 1 year ago

This video is incredibly valuable between walking through perf tools and explaining the specific consequences of things. Too often artists know "this is bad because I was told it was bad" but I couldn't tell you the exact consequence of certain things. Videos like these help close that knowledge gap.

@JdotCarver 1 month ago

Love this. Very useful to get an idea of what optimization work looks like.

@tylergorzney8499 1 year ago

I have been developing solo in UE for like 6 years, and I watch tons of videos etc., and you have covered so much in this video, much I did not know yet for optimization. Good stuff man. Thank you

@jeromegraves2826 1 year ago

Tom, this is pure gold - performance optimizations in context with explanations of thought process and best practices is so valuable. I picked up some new bits from this. Thanks for taking the time and IMO keep these coming!

@Karlettto89 11 months ago

I love this content. Watching someone actually optimizing - finding and solving the issues - is super useful especially for solo developers who understand how important optimization is, but know little about the tools and techniques to do it. THANK YOU!

@ABentPaperclip 1 year ago

DUDE. this is hands down the best unreal engine 5 video i have seen to date. subscriber for life! waiting for part 2!

@seifee 1 year ago

this is the best video on optimzation in UE I have seen so far.

@ViziElőd 3 months ago

Definitely the best optimization video I have seen! Appreciate it. Hope there will be more to come with UE 5.8 and 6 in the future :D

@user-zh2xy8ez8x 4 months ago (edited)

thanks tom i watched this one as well - and also cant wait for my friend to see what i did hahahaha
kidding - awesome tutorial :D

@kitapktcc 1 year ago

Great video, I've been looking for something like this for a long time. There are actually very few modern great videos on optimization and the technical part, much less to have the explanations available. Very valuable video, thank you for your efforts, I will definitely be glad to see something new!

@1783W 1 year ago

I love the depth of this long form content, thank you!

@IIStaffyII 1 year ago (edited)

Yes, this is amazing!

I worked much with VR the last few years so I never really got to experience optimizing a realistic game or at least game with many assets.
I learned lots of tricks for optimizing but most of it came down to material pipelines where we optimize for low draw calls and using masked with dither instead of translucent.
All our lighting was baked or mostly depended on 1 simple directional light.

@raditsyz 1 year ago

A great tip for any other artists/tech artists is to tune your lights by disabling 'Exponential Falloff' on your lights and set your exponent to 2-3. You can use this to make better fill lights that don't need as high of an attenuation radius. This trick combined with an increased 'Indirect Lighting Intensity' can create some gains for you without losing too much light detail and accuracy, especially when it comes to fill lights.

@boldheadstudio 1 year ago

GREAT video :) Super helpful in many aspects! Also didn't know about the ABTest command, will use that for sure

@535gfx 11 months ago

Great video, already shared tons of invaluable info. This video is the reason I will be buying your game optimisation course when I have a mature enough game going on. Thank you