Coin 5.7 Plugins Update MeshBlend - Next generation mesh blending without RVT v2.1

5.7

2.1 - Performance improvements & Hitch hunting Performance is one of my big passions and I'm very excited for this update! The last weeks I've been doing performance passes on both the shader and C++ side of the plugin. Shader improvements Misc optimizations and benchmarks with Nvidia Nsight Graphics. No visual changes, just smarter/better/less math operations. Relative shader performance on a 4K test scene
Old New
High 0,49 0,48 +2 %
Medium 0,31 0,24 +23 %
Low 0,20 0,17 +15 %

C++ improvements

• Improved overall flow and performance in the activator logic.,
• The Activator now handles processing components over multiple ticks (Attached video is of grids containing ISM with 15k instances each),
• Greatly reduced hitches due to memory reallocations,
• Fixed a specific issue causing large PCG actors to be processed multiple times.,

A note on update cadence No one wants to update a plugin every other week on a big project. I have big hopes this update will be my last "since launch" update, and going forward the update cycle should slow down a bit. Hopefully this can mark a stable update version that can stick around for a while! PS: Send me a DM if you ever see strange things in unreal insights. Even if it's "probably nothing". Kill the hitch!

2.0 - The great refactoring - Update available in the Epic Launcher

• MeshBlendActivator actor no longer needed (Actor will be removed in a upcoming update),
• Activator budget has been moved to a cvar called r.MeshBlend.ProcessBudget (Default is still 0.3 ms),
• Fixed editor artifact caused by different viewport buffer sizes in rare cases,
• Fixed some issues with packaging PackedLevelActors in 5.4+,
• Added MeshBlendWorldPartitionRuntimeCellTransformer for 5.6+ to support FastGeo in WP cell transformers,

Replaced Activator Actor with Subsystem The MeshBlend Activator Actor has been replaced with a UMeshBlendActivatorSubsystem. This means it will just work without having to add a special actor to every level. The old BP_MeshBlend_Activator actor will be removed in a future version. It's currently an empty shell to avoid any build warnings. Note: Please remove the old activator actor from the level in your project.

v1.5.1

v1.5

1.4 - Quality update
Adjusted the low quality preset - Better quality for same perf (r.meshblend.quality 1 should be much better now!),
Improvements to the overall visual quality,
Fixed a shader compile error when compiling shaders for forward shading

1.3 - User experience, PCG and misc bug fixes - Update available in the Epic Launcher

• Fixed issue with blend not going as large on smaller resolutions (This is the change posted earlier in this channel),
• Fixed issue with offline renders using alpha masks not having correct transparency in output image,
• Improved support for PCG/Runtime PCG (PCG Actors should now refresh automatically when generated/moved/etc),
• To help the overall user experience I've added some warnings that pop up if something is incorrectly configured
  • Added warning when user click Refresh Actors and settings are incorrect or the BP_MeshBlend_Activator is missing from the level,
  • Added warning when user click Refresh Actors in editor and Realtime is turned off (The activator can't tick when realtime is off, leading to confusion),
  • Added warning when applying blend on Asset/Actor and the materials on the mesh are not configured correctly,
  ,

1.3.1 - Substrate Hotfix - Update available in the Epic Launcher

• Fixed issue with Substrate not working on 5.5 and 5.7 (ue-main branch),

Substrate (aka Strata) has changes A LOT each UE version. Soo much so that every single version has slight differences in how it works.

Note With 5.5 Substrate went from Experimental to Beta. They also refactored the codebase so it was called Substrate and not Strata internally. I mistakenly remembered it was called Strata before, but mixed when that change occurred.

v1.2