What does it mean when in the landscape paint window, I have a big question mark in one of the material layers, instead of the image of the material?
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Hey there @Browserice! This sometimes happens during the shader compile. Does the material show up appropriately on the terrain?
I do not recall excactly as I played around with the textures and material while not paying attention to the landscape painting 3d view and somehow fixed the issue (no idea how).
Sometimes instead of a big question mark, the material in the painting window simply does not show up like this:
No worries! Generally even when it’s not displaying correctly in the material thumbnail, if it’s displaying appropriately on the terrain it’s not a problem and is usually fixed next shader compile. Usually the same with the un-rendered variant of the issue, though if it’s still wrong on the terrain, then it may be worth possibly deleting the shader cache in the project and rebuilding entirely.
Here is another case of that same problem. Except the negative effects are more severe. I did not even touch material index-0 !!!
Every times I update something in the landscape material it has similar effect. It is getting very annoying.
- I tried looking in the logs. There are multiple warnings but the only one that is understandable is about material index-0 saying it has to be a linear color instead of color (it is just a full black color texture to workaround another annoyance I am trying to fix). I did not even touch that material in ages so why an error message?
==> I switched the black material to linear to see what would happen. It is still with a big question mark but now my whole landscape is black and its not even the default material (index-1 is)
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I tried deleting all layer info from its folder + restarting UE5 + recreating them
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When I start UE5 and check the output log, the only warnin I see is a bunch of “Fixed up deleted layer weightmap” (234 of them).
I haven’t found a solution to this problem. I keep loosing time while being stuck on this every times.
Ahhh that’s a symptom of a larger issue for sure. It could be a shader caching issue since it only occurred when working with them. Try backing up your project, and deleting the folder DerivedDataCache from your project folder. This should clear the shader cache and after a shader rebuild may help.
Right now in that folder, there is only an empty VT folder
I will check from times to times to see if something gets populated in it.
How do I force a shader rebuild? I checked the build menu and found nothing related to this.
I opened a ticket for this but there is no way for me to check the progress of it nor to even look at it. I only got an open case number via email.
I am beginning to think that maybe I should start using UE4 instead. I mean its been out for a while so such bugs should have been fixed?
You could give the command recompileshaders all a try and that should run a full recompile of all shaders. Also the unofficial stance on using newer versions of UE is that UE4 is as close to a LTS (Long term support) build as it gets and is recommended still for fully fledged studios working on commercial games. UE5 is still undergoing bug fixes and will be for some time as it introduced so many new features, so you aren’t alone there.
I did a recompileshaders all. It took 2-3 minutes. I checked the output.log and did not see anything that needed a special attention.
Result=nothing changed on my landscape painting window and whole landscape is black in 3d view
I tried painting but some material do show up, some don’t and some others just turn the whole section gray.
Just now I updated to 5.1.1 but nothing changed.
By the way, did I loose all the painting I did before this happened?
I installed UE4.27 and recreated my landscape with the heightmap I have and created my landscape material + their layer info. But, I have the same problem with a different game engine??? What am I doing wrong?
I did not use the same project file as the one from UE5. I created a new one specifically for 4.27
The only common denominator are the textures. I created them with Gimp and exported them as 8 bit PNG files with no Alpha channel.
Hmmm, how many layers does your layer material have? I know that higher counts of layers for the layer masking can cause issues. If the textures are the only common denominator, it could be a compression issue, though it shouldn’t work before hand then.
I have 13 material in my landscape painting. Althought it should be 12 because I added the black one as index-0 as a workaround for another painting issue I have.
I noticed that in my material window, I have the same problematic textures as in the painting window. I do not recall if it was always the same relation or not.
Sorry about the late reply, had to do a bit of digging on the texture sampling issue. You’re just one texture above the base limit. If you haven’t already, could you try setting the sample source to shared:wrap to see if that sorts it.
Hi, I changed the material texture sample to shared:wrap for all 12 of textures. Did an apply + save all + created all texture layer infos and tried to landscape paint.
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The 3d viewport reacts the same way as applying a material for the first time: the landscape portion shows as a checkmark texture for 1 second, then normally it would show up the result of my painting. Except in this case, is shows nothing. It is black the same as before I painted.
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If I go right click on the layer I was using (that is not locked) and choose clear, the next option menu shows Paint, sculpt and all. Normally the paint option would be there if I had actually painted on that layer. In this case, even if it does not show up on the 3d viewport, the Paint in the clear option shows up as if the editor knew I had painted on that layer. Also if I check the Undo, it does show that the last action I did was painting on the landscape
I tried a console recompileshaders all but no changes.
I will try to remove one material from my landscape material and see if something changes. That would make my landscape material with 12 textures instead of 13.
Ok, I removed the 13th one. Put back the texture sample to the default value. Did an Apply + Save all + recompileshaders all. I still have the same material in the landscape paint window and in the material window that won’t show the image texture. If I try to paint with one of these, the landscape tile just goes back to the checkered material. If I try to paint on a different landscape tile with a material that its texture is shown, it will paint. But at one time, the display of what was paint was behaving weird (partially painting no matter the brush size) and other times it was really painting. When they were painting I did not have the material index-0 still showing beneeth what I had paint. But overall, I still cannot paint normally.
I tried creating a new material with only 2 layers. Painting with it was working fine.
As soon as I go back to my initial material, even with 12 layers, I cannot paint normally.
Overall there is a bit of improvement but not enough for me to paint normally.
By the way, when switching between the 2 landscape material (2 layers and 12 layers), can I switch back to the already created layer info or do I have to recreate all them? By reflex, I recreated all the them. So it sort of created duplicates except with a _1 added to the filename.
Noticed something. The materials where the texture is not shown, all had the SRGB value to FALSE. I checked all 13 textures and Gimp saved them as SRGB=TRUE. So then I edited these textures in UE5 to set them SRGB=TRUE. I had to lower the brightness of some because they where showing up too bright. Then I saved all textures.
When I went back to my material editor, the landscape material was showing the textures for those that I switched the SRGB. I switched back to landscape painting, and recreated the layer info of all 12 materials (I had deleted them before).
I then started painting all 12 materials and they were showing up in the 3d viewport. I am now able to landscape paint. Also, I seam to no longer have the issue with material index-0 that was still visible on the landscape even if I had painted over with another material.
I could in theory put back the 13th one I removed but at index-0…
I will do further tests as it is working now but am wondering if it will come back as soon as I do a material or texture update …
Ahhhh so it’s possible it was a compression issue? I’d assumed all of the textures were saved out the same so it had left my mind as a possibility and that’s my mistake there.
I think there 3 problems that I was experiencing:
- landscape material index-0 that was still visible underneeth whatever other material index I had painted on the landscape
- image of the texture not showing up on the landscape material layers and the landscape material
- not being able to paint the landscape
All 3 were caused, I think, by:
- Using a landscape material that had 13 material layers instead of 12
- Textures saved as SRGB not flagged in UE5 as being SRGB
Still I am not considering this fixed until I have done enough landscape painting and material updates without any issues.
Understandable, once the solution is clear, feel free to mark it or make a summary and mark that as solution when you get more information since this is a multifaceted issue. I agree that those are the two primary factors in this issue. Though I wonder why the color type was wrong on import.