Actor Coloration doesn't work with Unlit anymore?

Development Rendering
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1

I am with the impression that in previous versions of Unreal I could use Actor Coloration (e.g. HLOD Relevant Color) with Unlit. Now it just works with Lit. Is this how it is intended to work? I often need to add some dummy lights just to be able to see the colour in dark places.

Thank you!

2

Steps to Reproduce
Open any project and select Unlit View Mode. Then select any Actor Coloration (HLOD Relevant Color for instance). It goes back to Lit View Mode.

3

Hi Denis,

I investigated this and found some interesting things:

In UE 5.3, there was no separate concept of an “Actor Coloration” view mode, but there were two show flags: “Level Coloration” and “Property Coloration”. Since they were implemented as show flags, they could be enabled and disabled independently from the current View Mode, and worked well with Lit, Unlit, and Wireframe view modes (not with others, though).

In UE 5.4, Actor Coloration was made into a separate concept because of its perceived usefulness. Its implementation was generalized to allow for a growing number of coloration rules, and several new rules were implemented. Additionally, since it does not make sense to enable different coloration rules at the same time or together with most View Modes, Actor Coloration was reimplemented as a set of mutually-exclusive View Modes. Interestingly, they were mutually exclusive among themselves, but could still be turned on/off independently of the other view modes, still allowing them to work with Lit, Unlit, and Wireframe modes.

In UE 5.5, new coloration rules were added. Actor Coloration View Modes were also further modified to become standard View Modes, mutually-exclusive with all other view modes. This was done as designed in CL 34820702 on Perforce and Commit aa92de1ea4f7f6d13091015739fb23bb83370e3f on GitHub.

Unfortunately, this last change also had the side-effect of leaving the Actor Coloration view modes tied to a “lighting enabled” show flag. I believe it was an oversight of the devs, since older similar modes like “Mesh LOD Coloration” do disable lighting by default, which makes sense to keep the coloration from being altered by lighting.

I will file a bug report about this and get back to you with a public bug tracker link. There is a chance the devs will mark it as “by design”, but I believe they will agree that it makes more sense to disable lighting on those view modes.

In the meantime, you can use the following two console commands to independently control whether lighting and actor coloration are enabled:

`ShowFlag.Lighting

  • Force enable/disable lighting (even while using actor coloration)

ShowFlag.ActorColoration

  • Force enable/disable the last used actor coloration mode (works with lit, unlit, wireframe as before)`So, you can simply enter the desired actor coloration mode and enter “ShowFlag.Lighting 0” to view the coloration as unlit. Or you can, for example, change the viewmode to wireframe and enter “ShowFlag.ActorColoration 1” to view the coloration as wireframe.

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if this workaround suits your needs. And I’ll get back to you soon with that bug tracker link.

Best regards,

Vitor

4

Thank you Vitor, using console commands is way better than adding dummy lights, but I miss the old way tbh. Appreciate your help!

5

You’re welcome. And I completely understand, I agree it was more convenient before. But since the engine devs seem to be working on this area of the editor (there were changes from 5.3 -> 5.4 -> 5.5 as mentioned), let’s hope it keeps getting improved.

Here’s the bug tracker link: UE-268725. It should become accessible once the devs mark is as public.

All the best,

Vitor