All of the objects in my scene are spawned in by a pcg graph. I’ve gone through every single possible setting on all of my models and within the editor itself. I have not a clue as to what needs to be checked/unchecked. I have Affect Dynamic Indirect Light turned on as well as other lighting settings checked on everything.
This is what reflections look like in Lumen Reflection View. It’s a pain because under my water the reflections look like this.
From your provided screenshots, this looks like a reflection conflict, which should be corrected by a post process adjust, as seen in the technical documentation for Lumen:
Problem: Small Meshes are Black in Mirror Reflections
Small meshes appear black in mirror reflections because Lumen culls small objects from Lumen Scene for performance. In the Post Process Setting, Increase the Lumen Scene Detail will capture smaller meshes over farther distances.
If that adjustment does not fix the problem, then we could be facing a software conflict. Let’s try some methods for resolution:
Please update your OS to the latest version, and your nVIDIA drivers, make sure you are picking the “Clean Installation” option, as well as going for the “Developer” drivers, as these have more stable settings for engine work.
They are not nanite meshes. Neither is the landscape but it generates properly if I turn off the pcg graph.
I find nanite to be kind of garbage at the best of times. When I turned it off I had a massive performance improvement across my entire project. Of course I had to manually optimize all of my models but it was definitely worth it.
Is there not an alternative to nanite? Like if I started a new project from the default Unreal projects, reflections would show up properly.
I’ve done all that and not a single thing worked. My entire scene is still black.
Increasing Lumen Scene Detail did nothing.
Half of your suggestions are also redundant but I still checked that everything was up to date anyway.
Ray Tracing support was already turned off.
I never use RTSS or overclocking.
SM5 was all unchecked and redundant.
I don’t have motion blur turned on in post process.
You seem to be the most knowledgeable about this so far.
I’m not sure what ISM means though. I looked it up. I guess PCG is considered an Instanced Static Mesh.
Is there a setting within the pcg editor that allows better compatibility with Lumen? Why else would it include lighting options if they’re not compatible?
ISM means Instanced Static Mesh. It’s the type of geometry that is used by the foliage tool, packed level actors, and PCG graph. It’s important (as a major optimization) when drawing large numbers of mesh instances because it allows all instances of the same mesh/material to be batched into a single draw call.
When Lumen was first announced it was explained that drawing meshes into the surface cache is extremely slow without Nanite, and it’s been confirmed by Epic that they don’t plan to support non-Nanite ISMs with Lumen. It’s a hard limitation.
If you are able to place a regular static mesh into the scene with PCG, then it should probably work. I’m not familiar enough with PCG to know whether that’s possible or how to do it though.
Thanks, I’ll look into that. This program has so many different ways to make things happen that I would be surprised if there wasn’t a way to make pcg work like a static mesh. Mostly since the meshes themselves are supposed to be static anyways.
I’m starting to think that it’s a post process volume setting. If I hide the PPV my tree reflections show correctly. It doesn’t fix my rocks and plants under the water yet. I tried to turn on Nanite for everything except the trees with no luck.
Edit: the tree reflection was fixed by checking Screen Traces. It didn’t fix the underneath reflections yet.
Probably either have screen traces disabled in your post process volume or you’re using SSR as the reflection method. Even if the surface cache is black, when Lumen uses screen traces it will still produce correct reflections for the parts of the mesh that are on screen. If you pan the camera down so that the trees are off screen they will most likely turn black again
Single Layer Water materials don’t allow SSR as a reflection method.
I’m trying to figure out where to enable Screen Traces not in the post process volume. They are already enabled and only work on the top of the water. I managed to get my normals to sort of display correctly under the water but looking at anything directly reflected turns it black again.
SSR works fine on SLW materials. You don’t set it inside the material, SLW adheres to whatever the global reflection method setting is, which you can set in project settings and/or the post process volume.
Like I said, as soon as the object is off screen it will return to black. Nothing you can do about that without the surface cache.
If you have enabled Nanite and they are still black then it may be that the surface cache is being culled because the meshes are too small. You can adjust the Lumen Scene Detail setting in the post process volume and it will be less aggressive with the surface cache culling, this will increase the cost though.
Thanks, there’s a chance I might make a different water material that doesn’t use SLW. I found a great translucent one I can make.
I tried turning on Nanite for all my meshes but they were all culled as well. I can try turning up the Lumen details setting. Is there more than 1 location for that setting? It wasn’t that great when I tried it earlier. Unless I need to rebuild something.
I can’t seem to get screen space reflections to look nice around the edges so I don’t use it.
I’m making an underwater scene with still cameras so I sort of need some quality. I wouldn’t mind turning off reflections underneath altogether. I just can’t figure that out with layer water. So using a different method might work nicer.
I turned on Nanite for all the water models and the landscape.
After increasing the settings and lowering the distances this is what it looks like in Lumen overview. There are still many black spots but it’s less of an issue when looking through the camera views now. Playing with my Scalability settings lets me increase the quality of the preview. It looks better when it’s at a higher setting. I guess turning on Nanite for most stuff and adjusting a few settings fixed it.
