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Ice18Studios
Participant
April 16, 2025

Packaging big apps (OBB size limit)

  • April 16, 2025
  • 11 replies
  • 1152 views
Hello  !

We're trying to package our VR app, which contains a lot of MetaHumans Facial animations.
Until recently, we had no issues, but since I've added some more animations, I'm no longer able to package it.

Everything is checked as before, like I said it was working, I was having a main obb file and a patch obb file. Since I've added the new animations, I had to adapt my chunks, and now all of them have once more an acceptable size, as shown on the attached screenshots.
Chunks size #1Chunks size #2

So, cooking is successful.
However, packaging fails with error
\Saved\StagedBuilds\Android_ASTC.obb. The file may be too big to fit in an OBB (4 GiB limit and no overflows are permitted)

I was hoping to get multiple patch files, as long as my chunks were small enough to fit in, but maybe I'm wrong.

My guess is that I'm only allowed 2 obb files of 4 GiB each, and not one more.
Is that the case ?

And if so, how are we supposed to package a big app ?
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    11 replies

    dariomaciel
    Honored Contributor
    April 16, 2025

    you can try to package as an apk file (with everything inside it)
    Also, you can reduce the texture resolution of the Metahuman to help reduce the file size

    kutlaytunc
    kutlaytunc
    Inspiring
    April 16, 2025

    Agree. There are so many ways to optimize your project. Look for that in YouTube there are so many good resources, also check Reddit, there are ancient gems there 🤘

    Ice18StudiosAuthor
    Participant
    April 16, 2025

    Actually what's eating space is the recordings of Live Link Face animations sequences.
    I've tried to compress them but had no success.
    And we need the facial expressions to convey the emotions of the speaker.

    Also, even if we can find a trick today to go below the 8 GiB limit, we would add more content in the future and that time we won't be able to reduce the size.
    So at one point or another, we'll need a solution.

    I've already thought about making some DLC that would be automatically downloaded at startup.
    I was just wondering if I was missing something, because I think there are plenty of games on the Meta Store which are way over 8 Gb, and they don't use the DLC trick.

    kutlaytunc
    kutlaytunc
    Inspiring
    April 16, 2025

    What is the FPS of your sequences, maybe you can reduce to 24 or less if it works, don’t forget to make new animation sequence with reduced frame rate or it will take the same space since the original file has not been changed.
    Edit: Also there is a setting that excludes unused files from packaging, maybe you can use that too, but I don’t recall what and where it was.

    DevoJacob
    New Participant
    September 5, 2025

    I am facing this exact same problem when packaging our VR app. We have enabled overflowOBB files in the INI file and updated Android SDK and everything inbetween and still we get a LOG message saying "OBB larger than 4GB and overflow not permitted" and then ERROR. It just don't want to create patch-2, patch-3 etc and our project is about 8.5GB with optimizations done. 
    Did you find any solution to this problem and managed to get it working with OBB overflow? (We are on Unreal 5.6.1 btw)

    Ice18StudiosAuthor
    Participant
    September 5, 2025

    I had confirmation that we are only allowed two files (Main and Patch) of 4 Gb each.
    So it's not possible to package an app using that method.

    In our case, I've implemented a Chunk Downloader system and the files are stored on a web server.
    Have a look at those resources. They have flaws but are a good starting point to have something working:
    - https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/implementing-chunkdownloader-in-your-gameplay-in-unreal-engine
    - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlwqvWO3ju6OV5zY7IArOqbja56ghdkNS

    DevoJacob
    New Participant
    September 5, 2025

    Nice, thanks for the info!
    You don't happen to know if it is a limitation in Unreal that we can only have a main and patch file? I mean there is an allow OBB overflow setting in the engine after all, might this be a temporary issue with the current version of the engine perhaps?

    Either way, thanks for the help! Now at least we can stop troubleshooting this very annoying error.

    RiverExplorer
    RiverExplorer
    Honored Contributor
    September 5, 2025

    Ideas ... not an expert with Unreal yet.

    I have seen apps that were more than 9 gig in size. Clearly more that two 4 gig's. With Unity (yea, I think related)  I use addressables. I have never done this with Unreal. Unreal has PAK and DLC that can be configured to download additional content at runtime.

    I googled 'does unreal have the equivalent of addressables?' and got what could be helpful?? And got back a PAK and DLC reply.

    It is a pain to do, but it might solve your problem.

    Clearly the better solution would be to generate more OBB files. But I don't think that Android allows it.

    And 2 seems to be  the Android limit. The main, and a patch obb. So you will have to download at runtime.

     

     

    RiverExplorer.US]@gmail.com https://RiverExplorer.games
    Ice18StudiosAuthor
    Participant
    September 5, 2025

    Chunk Downloader is the closest equivalent to Unity's Addressables.
    That's what I've used to download content at runtime.

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