Vertex Declaration Crash in 4.17.2

Hello! Just updated to 4.17.2 hoping that InstancedStaticMesh related bugs were fixed, but I’m now experiencing a crash.

The output is:

Fatal error: [File:D:\Build\++UE4+Release-4.17+Compile\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Windows\D3D11RHI\Private\D3D11VertexDeclaration.cpp] [Line: 49] 
Unknown RHI vertex element type 0

The call stack:

>	FD3D11VertexDeclarationKey::FD3D11VertexDeclarationKey Line 49	C++
 	FD3D11DynamicRHI::RHICreateVertexDeclaration Line 97	C++
 	FDynamicRHI::CreateVertexDeclaration_RenderThread Line 1972	C++
 	FRHICommandListImmediate::CreateVertexDeclaration Line 2626	C++
 	RHICreateVertexDeclaration Line 3503	C++
 	FVertexFactory::InitDeclaration Line 301	C++
 	FInstancedStaticMeshVertexFactory::InitRHI Line 465	C++
 	FRenderResource::InitResource Line 33	C++
 	TGraphTask<`BeginInitResource'::`2'::EURCMacro_InitCommand>::ExecuteTask Line 784	C++
 	FNamedTaskThread::ProcessTasksNamedThread Line 650	C++
 	FNamedTaskThread::ProcessTasksUntilQuit Line 559	C++
 	RenderingThreadMain Line 325	C++
 	FRenderingThread::Run Line 476	C++
 	FRunnableThreadWin::Run Line 76	C++
 	FRunnableThreadWin::GuardedRun Line 25	C++
 	[External Code]

The FVertexDeclarationElementList contains 14 elements, the last 5 have VET_None type. Those seem to be added in InstancedStaticMesh.cpp at line 455, and all 5 vertex buffers seem to be NULL.

Could be related to: Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-50348) ?

For sure. It took two days for this question to go live for some reason. If anyone sees this, I’ve posted a workaround here.