Unreal Engine Plugin

Polygon Streaming models can be added to Unreal Engine based projects with the use of the Unreal Engine Plugin. This will allow the streaming of models with multiple millions of polygons to stream from the cloud into your Windows-based projects and applications.

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Stream Controller

The Stream Controller manages the streaming of models and streaming parameters inside your project. There must be only one Stream Controller per scene, since it will control all Streaming Models as one.

The Triangle Budget is a limit on the amount of triangles that will be drawn per frame. Increasing this will lead to better visual quality, but of course also higher processing and memory utilization. It's recommended to keep Triangle Budget to at least 30% of the full amount of polygons that you are going to stream. For example, if you are going to stream a 3D model of 10 million polygons, it's recommended to use a Triangle Budget of at least 3 million.

In case you use too low Triangle Budget, for example 500 thousand to stream 10 million polygons, you may reach the budget before it's possible to showcase the higher quality of the model. Resulting in only showing a lower quality version of the model in order to stay within the budget.

The Distance Factor is a factor between the distance of the camera to the object being streamed. The default value of 1.1 has a neutral preference. A higher value, such as 3 or 5, will have a preference for nearby objects over objects further away. These parameters can be changed at runtime to find the sweet spot for your scene.

The Distance Type can be set to Bounding Box or Bounding Box Center. In case it's set to Bounding Box it will calculate the distance between the camera and object based on the edges of the bounding box of the object. In case it's set to Bounding Box Center, it will calculate the distance from the center of the object. It's recommended to use Bounding Box for single objects, and Bounding Box Center for full environments in which the user will be walking inside the object.

The Close Up Distance is a change in the distance factor between camera and streaming object when the camera gets too close. For example, when the camera is at 3 units or less of distance from the object, it will use the value at Close Up Distance Factor, when the camera is further than 3 units from the object, it will use the value at Distance Factor. That way the system forces a strong streaming of data when the camera is very close to an object.

The other parameters should be left in default or you can check an explanation on the Supported Parameters section.

Supported Parameters

To start using the plugin, there are two main classes (Actors) that can be found in the Plugin's folder, or in the Classes menu, which will be all you need to stream your models inside Unreal Engine. The Stream Controller, and the Streaming Model.

You can drag and drop both Actors inside your Unreal Scene, and be ready to start streaming your converted 3D model inside the engine.

The Stream Controller should only be added once, and it controls the streaming feeds inside your scene. The Streaming Model is an Actor to be used with all models that will be streaming from the cloud into your project, you only need to add the URL of your converted model into the URL field to start streaming. You can add as many Streaming Models as you want inside your scene.

Once that's set, press play and your streaming models will already start streaming inside your project!

Streaming Model Component

The Streaming Model Actor represents the model to be streamed inside your project. A Streaming Model component always needs a reference to the Stream Controller component to function and a Source URL which is the Asset ID URL of your converted model. Once those two are correctly set, your model will start streaming inside your project as soon as you press Play.

The URL field is the Asset ID address of your streaming model, once the Asset ID is pasted in this field, the model can be streamed inside your scene.

You can also set different Quality Priority options by clicking at Streaming Runtime Options Settings. This means that some models can have higher priority of streaming than others, it can use only integer numbers and it works in the following logic:

The Stream Controller is a reference to the Stream Controller inside your scene and it needs to be set, otherwise the model won’t appear or be streamed inside your scene.

Show Preview option will create a simple preview of the model in the editor scene, so you can position and scale your model correctly without the need to run the game.

In case you would like to use a custom material in your streaming model, you can tick the Custom Material box, which will open a new panel that will allow you to change the materials of the model.

Supported Parameters