Faced with the challenge of building massive environments from over 60,000 mesh components, including fields of real-time simulated debris, the engineering team at Creative Assembly needed to find a way to reduce level streaming costs and optimize rendering of unique instances. In this talk, Grant Johnson, Senior Graphics and Engine Programmer at Creative Assembly, will look back at the problems the team faced building these environments in a multiplayer first-person shooter set in space, as well as diving into their solution (dubbed ‘Chocolate Rendering’): a modern geometry renderer injected directly into the engine. This talk will highlight how to reduce level streaming costs and increase unique instance counts while still using the foundations of Unreal Engine. Grant will also specify the team's approach to minimise engine modifications and ensure seamless future integrations.

This is part 1 of the "How Unreal Renders a Frame" series, you can access part 2 and part 3 as well. I was looking around the Unreal source the other day and inspired by some excellent breakdowns of how popular games render a frame, I thought to try something similar with it as well,…