I have some Megascan meshes that were rock cliffs. So they only had the facing polygons. I was getting holes in the distance field, so I closed the mesh and assigned it to the Distance Field Replacement Mesh. No change. But if I put the closed mesh directly in the scene, the distance field looks fine.
Here’s a screenshot of the distance field view. The left purple actor is the rock face with the replacement mesh. On the right, it’s the replacement mesh directly. Should they not be the same? They have the same material as well. Nothing is two sided. Properties on both meshes are identical. Why are they different? Sidenote: I’m not using nanite. Using UE 5.4
I can fix some of them. But not all. Some meshes, even when it’s a completely solid shape still looks like the shape on the left with holes.
How does one create proper distance fields for solid objects?
I found it.
It’s a bug in the editor.
It has to do with the materials.
Here’s a workaround:
Even if the material is ok, the editor often doesn’t generate the distance field correctly. So you need to switch to a material that works (usually a default or world material works fine). Save it. Close the window. Open the mesh again. Then switch back to your original material. If it still doesn’t work, try it again. It should eventually work.
The Distance Field Replacement Mesh property still doesn’t work. All of this is buggy in 5.4.
