Ok, I’ve searched the AnswerHub thoroughly. Yes, there’s plenty of reports concerning this issue, all marked as resolved although the solutions are things like “I’ve rolled back my project to a version from 2 month ago”, or “I’ve deleted the redirectors manually and fixed all references by hand”…
Please fix this, Epic!
Most of the time I move a blueprint actor class or component which is referenced in other blueprints and scenes my editor just crashes during the process
After the crash the file has indeed been moved and there’s a redirector asset in it’s old location, so far so good.
I run FixUpRedirectors, it says some references could not be fixed because they’re part of an unloaded asset, which in most cases is a level.
I load that level and try FixUpRedirectors, it says FAILED TO LOAD ASSETS, and lists the components of the asset i’m trying to fix.
This is absolutely common when moving assets. It only ever works on some very rare occasions, when moving simple graphic content that isn’t references much.
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I’m constantly having this issue as well. Overall stability of the engine has much improved, especially with 4.8, but moving or renaming assets remains a risky and messy business.
Is it something that’s being worked on?
Are there any workarounds or such to avoid these issues?
I’m also having this problems, sometimes i delete folders(and after restart i see them again) or rename something and close editor but after start i have errors(renaming back can help but its not good ) with this renaming assets.
I run FixUpRedirectors, it says some references could not be fixed because they’re part of an unloaded asset, which in most cases is a level.
I load that level and try FixUpRedirectors, it says FAILED TO LOAD ASSETS, and lists the components of the asset i’m trying to fix.
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Other than the AnswerHub issues mentioned above I can’t find any mention of these bugs. Have they ever been acknowledged by the Epic devs ?
I wonder if it only happens to a few users?
We’re using SVN for version control. Could it be related to that somehow?
Yep, had many issues with that, too. My whole project is full of ‘ghost files’ (redirectors) and not-really-deleted files. Replacing of references doesn’t work reliable either.
I’ve encountered these problems in projects with no version control as well, so I don’t think that’s it.
It does feel like I’m getting fewer crashes when I don’t use version control though.
If you do not this can cause file folders to still appear or the naming issues you’ve pointed out.
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In addition to what flip hazard said, I oftentimes find myself with broken redirectors. They don’t show up as assets or redirectors in the engine and fixing redirectors doesn’t do anything. All I can do is delete the files via the explorer manually. In other words, the whole redirection system seems to be a bit unstable. It would be interesting to know how the teams at Epic are handling file management and whether there are any plans to fix it.
[=Efrye;321628]
I’ve encountered these problems in projects with no version control as well, so I don’t think that’s it.
It does feel like I’m getting fewer crashes when I don’t use version control though.
In addition to what flip hazard said, I oftentimes find myself with broken redirectors. They don’t show up as assets or redirectors in the engine and fixing redirectors doesn’t do anything. All I can do is delete the files via the explorer manually. In other words, the whole redirection system seems to be a bit unstable. It would be interesting to know how the teams at Epic are handling file management and whether there are any plans to fix it.
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This isn’t a problem I have run into myself, typically I use fix up redirectors on the Contents folder in the Content Browser (I choose this folder specifically because it propagates to all child folders in the filepath) after moving or renaming any assets and have no errors from that point on. Can you walk me through some specific steps you are taking that reproduce this on your end? I’ll be happy to try to get this to occur on my side and see if we can find the root of the problem!
[= ;321754]
This isn’t a problem I have run into myself, typically I use fix up redirectors on the Contents folder in the Content Browser (I choose this folder specifically because it propagates to all child folders in the filepath) after moving or renaming any assets and have no errors from that point on. Can you walk me through some specific steps you are taking that reproduce this on your end? I’ll be happy to try to get this to occur on my side and see if we can find the root of the problem!
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It’s hard to pin down because it seems to happen randomly with deleted assets. Mostly with skeletal mesh files in my case, but that might be because that’s what I’m currently working with the most.
Here a way to reproduce it that always works for me:
Open the ShooterGame project version 4.8.
Force delete the HeroTPP folder. (HeroTPP_AnimBlueprint and HeroTPP_Death can’t be deleted.)
Try to fix up redirectors via right click on the Content folder or HeroTPP folder. It won’t work.
Restart the project and try to fix up redirectors the same way. It still won’t work.
In this case I have to use “force delete” since the assets are referenced by other files, but in my own project this problem exists even with character assets that haven’t been used anywhere.
And please keep in mind that this isn’t exactly the same problem as described in the opening post, it just highlights some of the current issues with the redirection system.
I used have the issue until I was pointed to the “Fix Redirectors” link … since then I have not encountered this issue. Sometimes when I use it or try to delete assets, it tells me the assets are still in memory … so I merely open a new map and close all my open Blue Prints.
If the above doesn’t help, I close the editor and re-open the editor … no Blueprints are then referenced in memory and I can safely run the “Fix Redirectors”.
In my opinion the need to use the “Fix Redirectors” option is far less frequent in 4.8 then it was in 4.7 … 8-}
[=Efrye;322395]
It’s hard to pin down because it seems to happen randomly with deleted assets. Mostly with skeletal mesh files in my case, but that might be because that’s what I’m currently working with the most.
Here a way to reproduce it that always works for me:
Open the ShooterGame project version 4.8.
Force delete the HeroTPP folder. (HeroTPP_AnimBlueprint and HeroTPP_Death can’t be deleted.)
Try to fix up redirectors via right click on the Content folder or HeroTPP folder. It won’t work.
Restart the project and try to fix up redirectors the same way. It still won’t work.
In this case I have to use “force delete” since the assets are referenced by other files, but in my own project this problem exists even with character assets that haven’t been used anywhere.
And please keep in mind that this isn’t exactly the same problem as described in the opening post, it just highlights some of the current issues with the redirection system.
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Can you try this with one of the blueprint based projects? The problem you’ll run into with Shootergame is that many of the classes that are deleted are directly tied into many of the C++ classes, so any pointers in code that are now pointing to a NULL value now must be manually removed. Additionally, keep in mind that redirectors are not going to be the primary issue when deleting folders. At that point, redirectors will not help as they are designed to point code to the file’s new location. Any references to that information is considered NULL if an asset is deleted and will need to be re-referenced.
You need to stop using these redirectors and learn from unity how to handle all (ALL) files using .meta, which has not failed me ONCE in 4 years i work with it.
As soon as i switch to UE4 to have some fun, just for myself to use better gfx, first thing i ran into that enrages me is this outdated useless concept of
redirectors that is beyond recovery broken.
Moving and renaming assets is Epic’ly confusing, if not broken. My projects shouldn’t break, require me to close the editor to get them to appear when migrated, etc, when moving assets. I also can’t figure out why when I move assets from one folder to another, many times it will show up in the new folder in the Editor but when I look at the file structure they’re still sitting in the old folder on disk, the folder I needed to delete. Fixing up redirectors works many times, but many times it does not.
6 out of 10 times I try and execute blueprint that has a moved asset in it, the Editor crashes.
I love UE4 but the file management seems like it needs some polish. Also, being able to have more control over migrating assets between projects would be amazing. Every time I migrate I get a mess of folders and assets, then of course when cleaning them up…you get the above mentioned issues all over again.
This is one of the biggest pains of using UE4… I HATE messy directory structures and I find myself spending about 30 minutes setting everything in the right place only to find that things are missing and/or are still in the actual directory. So, what I did was get a perfect project with the marketplace content I want (and also the editor settings) and use that as a template.
For me, what I found to work is to ensure that I have a blank level loaded…move things around and do the fix redirectors and then delete the actual folder in the project file. That does work, for the most part. BUT, I wish the FIX REDIRECTORS just worked…they don’t all the time.
[=samb;429954]
You need to stop using these redirectors and learn from unity how to handle all (ALL) files using .meta, which has not failed me ONCE in 4 years i work with it.
As soon as i switch to UE4 to have some fun, just for myself to use better gfx, first thing i ran into that enrages me is this outdated useless concept of
redirectors that is beyond recovery broken.
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In case anyone is interested, under the hood unity assigns unique GUID to every file, and apparently stores references to files using those guids. So, when you move file elsewhere, guid doesn’t change and references don’t break.
Personally I move/delete all my files in Editor first - then go into Explorer and delete the redirectors manually (the little 1kb files). I then re-open the editor and fix any references by plugging in the newly moved assets and it was as if the redirector was never there. This isn’t hard to do if you maintain readable and well organized content folders.
