So I have a level with a bunch of actors that were animated in Maya, exported as FBX, and imported into Unreal. I am controlling their animations via Matinee. All of the objects work except for two, which render fine and are visible in the editor preview window (and when running the Matinee) but when I enter Play mode, it doesn’t seem that they are rendering at all. The weirder part is that sometimes they will render and I will be able to see them just fine, but this is rare. I’ve reimported a dozen times, and the settings are all the exact same as all the other objects. I’ve tried changing materials as well but to no avail. I’ve also tried increasing the bounds scale, have verified that ‘Visible’ is checked and that ‘Actor Hidden in Game’ is not checked. I am desperate at this point, as I have only until Sept. 24th to get this working, and I can’t seem to find anyone with the same problem. Help would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you.
From what you describe you have many assets that have been imported into UE4 from Maya. In UE4 you are controlling the animation that was made in Maya by way of Matinee. All of your assets work fine except for two. These two are visible in your editor but not when you press play.
I have a few questions for you.
1.) Can you create this in a fresh project?
2.) Does this happen when you create a project with this animation and objects in 4.9?
3.) Can you link me a screenshot or YouTube with this happening?
If you would link me your DxDiag along with the rest of this information then I will continue to investigate this problem at that time.
Yes. I created a new project, imported FBX’s with their animations, setup Matinee, and pressed ‘Play’. At first they worked and I thought it was fixed, but after running it again the objects disappeared as in my main project. I also tried converting my main project 4.9 and the problem is still there.
Does this happen when you create a
project with this animation and
objects in 4.9?
Yes.
Can you link me a screenshot or
YouTube with this happening?
https://youtu.be/kKoaVgcmrh4 You will see me play the scene using Matinee at first, and you can see the lasers and sparks, and then when I enter ‘Play’ mode, the lasers and sparks are gone.
I downloaded your project and then followed these steps.
1.) Open Project
2.) Go to Matinee and press play.
3.) Observed the lasers firing.
4.) Stopped matinee.
5.) Pressed play in viewport(PIE)
6.) Observed lasers not firing.
7.) Clicked on your laser beam assets and went to their details panel.
Under animation where you have Use Animation Asset chose as Animation Mode. Under that there is a tab for Anim to Play. You have none assigned. I assigned the respective laser beam animation and when pressing Play in Editor I saw the laser beams appear. After that I switched them back to none and saw them disappear. I then assigned them again and they were playing again.
I believe you have the laser beam animations assigned to play in the Matinee but not in the viewport.
This seems to have done the trick. Thank you very much.
EDIT: Apologies, I spoke too soon. Looks like the SpaceStation is still suffering from the same problem. Checked to make sure the animation asset was set with ‘Anim to play’. Did you verify the SpaceStation actor working on your end?
I am glad that the animation was fixed for the lasers.
I tested the animation on your space station. I opened the skeletal mesh assigned with your space station. I then assigned your animation to it in the animations tab. Your entire space station disappeared. I do not know what caused this issue but I suspect it is specific to that animation.
The space station comes in near the end of the sequence. Open Matinee and scroll through to the very end and you’ll see it appear. It works in Matinee, not when ‘Play’ is active. I don’t think this is an animation problem, as it looks fine in Matinee and the export was no different than any others.
Seems like a problem when you have the asset automatically playing a stored animation and a Matinee timeline with the asset’s animation playing at the same time. Not sure, but that’s what it seems like. Thanks for your help.
Oy. It never ends. Sorry for the back and forth, but it keeps seeming as if all is good and then something else breaks. I will attach the full project so maybe you can get a big picture idea of what may be going on.
The scene in Maya is rather large. Like, huge. Is it possible the vast distances of these objects are causing them to just completely not render? Now, it just appears to be random objects that won’t show up. Once it was Jupiter, then it was BigAsteroidGroup1, then Venus, etc. It happens on builds as well. I will play the build, things will seem okay, and then when my friend runs it, objects will be missing. Is it bounds scales? Or culling distances? I have no idea.
I’ve included the planets into the test scene. If you could take a look and see what might be causing this, that would be amazing. We’re running close to a deadline and I’m starting to sweat. Thanks, .
It could be the shear size that is causing this issue. UE4 by design is not a space simulator. We try to discourage extreme values for certain things. For instance, if you had a very far off distance, and you had a zoom function that allowed you to zoom in on it from say 3000km away, and you zoomed in on an object. If that object was close to another, or overlapping you would see artifacts occur due to UE4 trying to calculate what takes priority on screen.
The other factor is how fast you are moving. I didn’t see the “objects not showing up,” as you described. However, when flying around two planes, i’m assuming earth and moon, were stuck dead center of my viewport.
I would look into this and see if you can adapt your project.
For examples you can go to the UE4 launcher and grab the content examples files from the Learn tab. In it is a map labeled “level streaming.”
I really hope this helps and good luck with the deadline.
I had a problem like this but with Sequencer and with characters in a hallway type room. I found this solution worked fine to solve my disappearing characters but I had some anim trails through animation notifys on the animations the characters were performing which never came back. I guess that’s not too bad overall really. The level the characters were in was of a modest size rather than a big space scene so I thought it might have been to do with running out of video memory or something like that ?