# Limitations, Recommendations, Workarounds & Tips

# Loss in texture resolution (limitation)

Simplygon currently relies on material flattening to pre bake the Unreal Engine material into an intermediate material. This is done using the material flattening process. This result in new set of textures that are then used by Simplygon during its bake process. Since both material flattening and Simplygon using the same output resolution which is usually lower than the source textures combined this can results in slightly fuzzy looking textures if viewed at close distance. Ideally material baking should be used for far away meshes.

# Distributed processing progress (limitation)

When using distributed asset building. There is no support for getting progress from FastBuild and Incredibuild. This is currently a limitation. For Incredibuild you can use the monitoring application provided as part of the package.

# New UV generation limitation when separating trunk and foliage (limitation)

Currently when using Billboard Cloud Pipeline with Separate Trunk and Foliage make use to check the number of UV's on the source asset. If this is less than MAX_TEXCOORDS/MAX_STATIC_TEXCOORDS engine constant. Mainly as we keep source UVs and separating trunk and foliage requires us to keep part of the source geometry, which mean all source uv, and newly generated geometry with a new set of UVs.

# HLOD Settings (limitation)

Currently due to being a plugin integration. HLOD settings are limited to the what is available through the HLODOutliner. We currently do not plan to expand on the functionality for UE4.

# LODGroup to LODRecipe Conversion (workaround)

LODGroup to LODRecipe conversion is not currently provided. However with python scripting available technical artist should have tools available to easily write a script to map LODGroups to LODRecipes.

If your project previously used QuadricErrorMetric based simplification interfaces provided by Epic. Once you switch to Simplygon we recommend that you use LODRecipe that you flush your DDC. So any cached LOD data from before wont override Simplygon generated LODs. Once you are using Simplygon we recommend that you use LODRecipes.

# Compiling Plugin Source with treat warnings as errors. (recommendation and workarond)

Currently the plugin modules warn on unsafe typecast. This Unreal Engine build setting can be disabled. There is a powershell script provided in the installer *BuildModulePatcher.ps1 that can toggle between warning on unsafe type cast or disabling the warning. You can find the script under the default installation path for Simplygon.

# Exporting scene and pipeline (tip)

If you are experience issues. You go to Project Settings->Simplygon plugin and enable Debug checkbox and also enable Export and pipeline and scene. This will allow you to enable exporting of scene and pipeline. The export path is ProjectDir/Intermediate/Simplygon

# Visualizing intermediate flattened textures (tip)

You can visualize the intermediate texture generated during material flattening process using the following console command. The textures are outputted to ProjectDir/Intermediate/Simplygon

MaterialBaking.SaveIntermediateTextures = 1

# Mass assign LODRecipes (tip)

The simplygon_helpers.py script provides users with a methods to mass assign a LODRecipes to Static & Skeletal meshes in a folder.

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