[4.10.2] - UMG Layering/Z-Order Not Working

Development Programming & Scripting UI
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1

Hey Guys,

Hope everyone is doing well. I have a serious issue with UMG and I cannot figure out how to get past it. UMG in general is amazing but is heavily flawed atm. I can see the UMG for AAA in the Trello board and this is extremely crucial to a game that I’m working on that is releasing in sometime near Q2/Q3 of this year. I developed for countless years in Silverlight and WPF using XAML and Expression Blend and it puts a smile on my face knowing Michael Noland, Nick Darnell and the amazing team behind UMG team pulled a lot of inspiration from that right down to the attribute layout and icons.

In regards to my problem, I have a custom widget that shows information about a given inventory items information. As a note if it makes any sense, this widget is contained in another custom widget that serves as the container for that UI.

So in the widget ItemInfo, the layout is as follows…

[ItemInfo]
 [SizeBox w:512 h:512]
  [GridPanel]
   [Border BrushColor=Black]
   [etc...]

There are only native Epic UMG Widgets in this ItemInfo Widget and all have their Layer/Z-Order set to 0. Back in the custom UI Container that has one of these widgets…

[SomeUI]
 [GridPanel Name="LayoutRoot"]
  [GridPanel Name="SomeUIRoot"]
   [GridPanel Name="SomeUIContent1"]
   [GridPanel Name="SomeUIContent2"]
  [CanvasPanel]
   **[ITEMINFO]**

For some reason, no matter the layout or Z-Order, things like TextBoxes and Borders in any of the SomeUI*, they show up on top of my custom widget. I cannot for the life of me fix this issue no matter what I do.

I have also noticed this bug with some of the other native widgets. For example here is another bug that is related and hopefully helps you narrow it down. Take a GridPanel and give it for children a ProgressBar and a TextBox. Normally you will see the text appear above the ProgressBar. But if you fill in the percentage, the underlying “Energy Bar” covers up the text, also no matter how high you set the Z-Order of the text or its layout.

As a note, this blocks and makes finishing a major task on the game I’m working on in our JIRA a little problematic. I can likely shift around a couple tasks while Epic looks into this but if there is any way this can be expedited, that would be beyond amazing. I completely understand and don’t expect that but anything is highly appreciated.

Hope this helps and thanks again. Keep up all the amazing work on 4.11 and thanks again. Take Care! :smiley:

2

Alright, so now things get weirder but I’m getting an idea of what could be happening.

What I did was encapsulate my custom widget that is getting interference from other elements in a Canvas Panel so I could attempt to set a Z-Order. Didn’t work but then I had a hunch that what if I encapsulate this thing a couple more times and funny enough, every time I did it, a layer of things started disappearing. This helped me temporarily solve this but I literally had to encapsulate my Widget in 4 Canvas Panels just to get this to work.

Definitely can move forward but if you try to replicate this and/or the progress bar issue I mentioned above, that should help you figure this out. I want to see this issue resolved so if that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll help out.

Thanks and hope this helps!

3

Hello MC Stryker,

I was unable to reproduce the issue that you are describing above. I have a few questions for you that will help narrow down what issue it is that you are experiencing.

Quick questions:

  1. Can you reproduce this issue in a clean project?
  2. If so, could you provide any additional steps needed to do so on our end that were not provided in your original post?
  3. Could you provide screen shots of the issue that you are experiencing?
4

Hey Rudy!!!

Just made a video and going to upload it that showcases the issue. I did try the progress bar issue in the vid and it appears that isn’t happening again for me. Hang tight and I’ll let you know when the video is live… Thanks and hope you are doing well!

5

Hey Rudy, I just sent you a PM with the link to the video. Let me know what you think and thanks for looking into it.

6

I was able to reproduce this issue in a clean project. What appears to be happening is that certain widgets will always appear on top of others when placed inside of a grid panel. I have written up a report ( UE-26289) and I have submitted to the developers for further consideration. I will provide updates with any pertinent information as it becomes available. Thank you for your time and information.

Make it a great day

7

Awesome! Thanks again Rudy and take it easy.

8

Michael Noland? Man that guy gets credit for everything…

Try hitting the Compile button - this is one of those properties that isn’t refresh in synchronize properties for the widget. Other than that, I find everything sorting correctly when I adjust layer (at least in 4.11 P5)

9

Hey Nick, hope you’re doing well! I apologize about highlighting Michael only on that one and didn’t mean anything negative by it. My mind was elsewhere that day. I know you as well have done a tremendous amount for UMG and the editor/engine and I honestly appreciate everything that you and so many other devs at Epic have done. I have a long list with you on it and many other staff members I could personally thank not too mention the unbelievable support staff.

I know you are heavily behind UMG like Michael and also an extremely talented developer. Again I do apologize about that one and edited the original post to give credit where credit is due. If I may make a suggestion, please pretty please add a per object Motion-Blur option to turn it on or off for widgets especially among other things like Static Meshes, TextRenderComponents, etc. That’s the one thing I’ve really wanted the most lately that existed in UE3 as Motion Blur Scale and would lend itself well to VR especially.

I posted a thread in the Epic feedback forums (Actor Motion-Blur Scale/Deactivate - Feedback for Unreal Engine team - Unreal Engine Forums) but it didn’t get much love. Its the most apparent if you take a widget component, attach it to a Camera Component, and rotate the camera when using it as the primary view target. Even though the Widget is relative to the camera it blurs a great deal unfortunately and makes it hard to implement 3D HUDs.

Also, I did press the compile button at the time Nick and unfortunately the case I had did create this problem and Rudy was able to replicate it. I had a video but I had to take it down since my one-drive was filling up.

But honestly, thank you very much Nick! I really appreciate everything you’ve done. Hope you and the team have a great week!

EDIT: I’ll give this a shot in 4.11 when it drops soon, it might have already been fixed pretty quickly

10

Hello MC Stryker,

After doing a little digging I found that this request has already been made. If you would like further information on the results you can follow the link below. I hope that this information helps.

Link: Excluding object from Motion Blurr - Rendering - Epic Developer Community Forums

Make it a great day

11

Thanks Rudy!!! You rock!!!

From now on, I’ll make sure to post that kind of feedback here on AnswerHub as well going forward into the future instead of just the UE forums. Thanks for taking the time to search that for me. I’ll keep my eyes on that thread. You have a great day as well and thanks for all your help. Much appreciated and take care Rudy!

EDIT: Just saw Andrews answer… bummer. Well maybe in the future. Thanks.