Polygonflow Dash

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Polygonflow Dash

In this server, you can ask any question you may have about Dash. The world building plugin for Unreal Engine 5.

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Polyhaven Issues

If the thumbnails of Poly Haven is not loading and/or you are not able to download the assets please try this: 1. Close unreal 2. Delete this folder c:\Users \ "USERNAME"\Documents\PolygonFlow\ContentLibrary\PolyHaven 3. Open unreal and start Dash + Content Browser...
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Can I pause or freeze tools?

Yes you can! We have this freeze function inside the menu of most of the tools in Dash

LOD/Culling Problems

If you get objects not being visible or showing bad LODs there are a couple of things you could try: If you have nanite objects with masked materials and they are culled then you can lower Opacity Mask Clip Value for each material...

Megascans/Bridge assets not visible in the Content Library

If the Megascans view in the Content Library is empty for you even though you have assets downloaded from UE-Bridge, the most probable reason for this is that the Content Library couldn't locate where you downloaded your Bridge assets. Here is a short video showing you how to locate the Bridge "UAsset" folder and add that path to the Content Library. Sometimes it takes a minute for the newly downloaded assets from Bridge to appear. ...

Bake Instances to Static Meshes

You can type Bake Instance in the search bar, then open the tool that gets suggested. Select your instances, then pass them to this tool, and all instances will get converted to static meshes. This doesn't delete your instances, so the two of them (static meshes and instances) will be overlapped. Just delete the instance actor ,and you should have your static meshes right in front of you....

Converting Scatter Instances or Procedural Meshes

In general, our Scatter tools create HISM instances (same as UE foliage or UE PCG) and tools such as The Terrain or Road Tool create procedural meshes. Scatter Tools (Surface Scatter, Grid Scatter, Physics, etc.): You don't need to convert them or break the link towards the tool, but if you move the meshes you have scattered upon the performance will of course be better if the tool link is broken. So here are some options that are useful in different scenarios: 1. From within the Scatter Tool in question, open the menu and click Delete, that will will delete the tool and thus break the connection so you can't edit the result anymore with our tool. But the result will of course exist in the environment. The result is still an HISM. This connection would also be broken if you delete the original mesh you are scattering, or for example, the spline you have used in a Path Scatter. ...

Displacement

Dash has a displacement setup in its UE5.3 and 5.4 Megascans materials by default. (Not for the Poly Haven assets) To use it, make sure that the mesh you're applying the material on has nanite enabled. If it is not turned on, you can search for nanite in Dash to find an action that will turn it on (Actor Switch Nanite), on your selected mesh. Then also make sure that nanite tessellation is enabled in UE5. You can do that by running enable nanite tessellation command in the Dash prompt bar, if you haven't enabled it already. Once that's done, drag and dropping any material on your mesh will have tessellation working. You can then also adjust it from within our Material Edit tool. ...

How to Scatter Inside Curves?

To scatter "inside" a curve like you'd do with PCG: - Open your Dash scatter tool, then go to the group Object Masking. - With your curve selected in the viewport, click on the Plus icon of the Objects property under the group. - Then check the Keep Inside checkbox, and that's it! ...

Plugin 'GraphNUnrealPlugin' failed to load

If you get this error message the problem is likely that MeshPainting is disabled in your project. To fix this you simply need to open the *uproject * file and change the "Enabled" value from false to true for the "MeshPainting" and then re-save the uproject file. "Name": "MeshPainting", "Enabled": false...
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License Manager Problems

If you ever get an error similar to "Date header is not valid" the reason is most likely due to your Windows Time is out of sync. By following the steps in this article you should be able to sync it and then once you try to open Dash again it should work just fine. https://www.pcworld.com/article/1513815/how-to-make-your-laptop-change-time-zones-automatically-in-windows-11.html ...

Installation of Dash Failed

So ideally the installer should find your UE versions automatically and install properly. But if you come to this step in the installation and it does not find your UE versions, you need to follow these steps:

Transferring UE Scene to another Computer

If you are gonna transfer your UE scene to another PC and want to be able to continue adjusting the Dash tools, you need to make sure to also move the associated json file that we create when you are using Dash. This JSON file is named after your level name and is located next to your level. If you are using P4 or similar solution, make sure to fix so that this file is moved alongside the rest of the files. ...

Scatter Limitations w/ Nanite

Dash creates instanced hierarchical meshes which are very efficient in Unreal Engine, but Nanite can become overwhelmed with too much polygonal data to render if scenes become very complex. If your scattering reaches this limit, you'll need to change it with a command that Nanite suggests in the UE window when the limit is reached.

Path Scatter - How to scatter on a curve/spline

Just as you can scatter on an surface, on top of a mesh or on another Scatter Instance by dragging and holding Ctrl from our Content Library, you can also scatter on a curve/spline directly. Just select your curve/spline and drag your asset while holding CTRL from our Content Library, then when you release it, make sure to choose Scatter on Selected. That will use our Path Scatter tool to scatter your mesh on the spline/curve. And then you can of course tweak the settings however you like. In this example we scatter two instances of planks in order to create some flat planks and some standing planks outside the flat planks. You can of course also select multiple curves/splines before dragging and then it will scatter on all splines directly....

Use the "Show All Tools" command to remove Dash tools from an existing scene

You might find yourself needing to delete an existing Dash tool in your scene. Here's how you do it.

Object Masking vs Proximity Mask

In some scenarios you might not get good enough results with proximity mask, then you could try the Object Masking feature instead. Object Masking uses raycasting, and allows you to even remove stuff that's inside the barrel, for example. This results in much better proximity accuracy. Proximity Masking is point-based and will rely on all the vertices of your barrel to keep the closest plants to them. It has no "interior" awareness or anything of the sort. It's much, much faster, ofc....

Crash Log files

If you get unexpected crashes that you want to report to us, please try and send us these two files along with a detailed message on what led to the crash so that we can try and reproduce it and solve it for you 🙂 1. CrashContext.runtime-xml 2. "ProjectName".log ...
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Failed to install, UE still open - Error Message

If you get a similar message during installation there are 2 things you need to try: 1. Check the Windows Task Manager and make sure everything Unreal Engine-related is closed properly. If that doesn't work; 2. Cancel the installation and try to run it as an administrator instead. ...

Quick Guide Dash Trial License

So with our new license system and with our 30-day free trial period this is how you should proceed to get a Dash license 1. Go to https://www.polygonflow.io/ and click on the "Download Trial" button, this will download Dash for you. 2. Once it has been downloaded you need to install it. In the installation, you will get the option to choose the versions of Unreal you want to use it in. (Make sure UE is closed when installing)...
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