Black render artifacts in Mac build

Development Rendering
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1

Hello!

We are working on a Mac version for our game.

When playing from a completed build we suddenly see these rendering artifacts all over our levels.

These artifacts looks like this:

233712-screen-shot-2018-03-13-at-130346.jpg
233712-screen-shot-2018-03-13-at-130346.jpg2560×1600 227 KB

and resembles the ones reported in this thread:

However, there’s one huge difference since everything looks fine for us in the editor making troubleshooting extremly tedious.

We’ve tested with both Shader model 4 and 5, which both yields the same result. Any idea of what we can do about it?

EDIT: Forgot to mention this is confirmed to happen on multiple Mac versions on builds built from (so far) two different Macs.

EDIT 2: Alright, we’ve found a way to make the artifacts actually appear in the editor! If we apply any material using Masked as Blend Mode we can see the problem making it much easier to troubleshoot without having to build. This also means this might not be a packaging problem after all.

2

Is DFAO enabled? If it is, could you try to disable one?

3

We’re not using DFAO and Generate Mesh Distance Field is not enabled.

4

After a few hours of testing we’ve concluded that this is directly linked with Spline Mesh Actor. We’re using Spline Mesh Actors to make our tracks, and the artifacts only show up on (any) mesh that’s placed by one.

We know this because we tested to delete everything except a single spline track from a level and could still see the artifacts.
Then we made a new build using Unreals default material on some of our tracks to make sure the underlying problem isn’t with our materials but the splines meshes themselves (since the default material isn’t Masked we have no way to see this in the editor before building).

This is the result from that build, played on very low graphical settings just to make sure:
Video

(sorry for the filming-a-screen quality, couldn’t be bothered to install any screen capture on the Mac we’re using just for this)

In the video you can see a couple of meshes placed by a spline using the default gray material, and as you can see the problem persists. We’re gonna try to replicate it in a totally fresh project now to make sure it hasn’t to do with any weird Project Settings…

EDIT: Alright we have now managed to replicate the artifacts in a starter project on Mac.

Steps to recreate:

  1. Create new Blank project with sample content (we’re using UE 4.18.3 on Mac OS 10.13.3.)

  2. Add spline mesh actor.

  3. Set chair as mesh in spline-actor

  4. Build light.

Result:
See picture

Expected:
No artifacts

EDIT: Moved to Bug Reports since we wrongly assumed it had to do with packaging.

5

Hello,

We’ve recently made a switch to a new bug reporting method using a more structured form. Please visit the link below for more details and report the issue using the new Bug Submission Form. Feel free to continue to use this thread for community discussion around the issue.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-and-releases/1410408-unreal-engine-bug-submission-form

Thanks