Virtual Textures in Unreal Engine optimize memory by streaming only the visible and necessary parts of large textures as "tiles”. This reduces GPU memory usage, improves performance, supports larger and more detailed textures, minimizes streaming hitches, and gives artists more freedom.
With Virtual Textures enabled in the Project Settings, MetaHumans assembled in MetaHuman Creator with Bake Materials set to active export Face and Body materials and textures that utilize this feature.
Virtual Texture support for assembled MetaHumans can be disabled in Project Settings by disabling Use Virtual Textures.
Use Virtual Textures (Project Settings > Rendering): Enables Virtual Texture support for assembled MetaHumans. When combined with Bake Materials it produces materials and textures with Virtual Texture support enabled. Disable this option to always assemble MetaHumans using regular textures.
During creation, MetaHuman Creator works entirely with regular textures both with local and downloaded texture sources.
Texture Overrides
When using Texture Overrides, the editor expects regular textures as the input even if Virtual Textures are enabled in Project Settings. Virtual Textures are only used on assembled and baked MetaHumans.
Assembly
When Virtual Texture support is enabled for a MetaHuman, MetaHuman Creator appends _VT to material instance and texture names to prevent conflicts with existing textures.
If a MetaHuman is assembled with bake materials unchecked, the resulting materials and textures use regular textures instead.