Opening Levels in Unreal Engine Takes Too Long Due to Substance Plugin Behavior
When opening levels in the Unreal Engine editor, the process is extremely slow. Upon investigation, it was found that the delay is caused by the RebuildAlert function, which calls Substance::Helpers::SubstancesRequireUpdate. This function iterates through all Substance assets and calls GraphRequiresUpdate on each.
The issue lies within GraphRequiresUpdate, as it internally calls AssetRegistryModule.Get().SearchAllAssets(true). In Unreal Engine 5.4.4, this function introduces a 100 ms sleep. With 1000 Substance assets in the project, this results in a delay of 100 seconds when opening a level.
I noticed that in all occurrences (two) of GraphRequiresUpdate being called higher up in the stack, AssetRegistryModule.Get().SearchAllAssets(true) had already been invoked. Therefore, I commented out the AssetRegistryModule.Get().SearchAllAssets(true) call within GraphRequiresUpdate, which eliminated the significant delay when opening levels.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Use a project with a large number of Substance assets (e.g., 1000).
- Open a level in Unreal Engine 5.4.4 with the Substance plugin enabled.
- Observe the extended loading time.
Proposed Solution:
Remove or optimize the redundant call to AssetRegistryModule.Get().SearchAllAssets(true) within GraphRequiresUpdate to prevent unnecessary delays.
Environment:
- Unreal Engine version: 5.4.4
- Substance Plugin version: 71
- OS: Windows 11 23H2
Impact:
This issue significantly affects productivity when working with large projects that rely on Substance assets.
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