Random textures turn black

[ClockworkOcean]

Back again, wondering if anybody has found the root cause of this.

During gameplay or while using the edtior, there will be a bit FAT hitch follwed by certain nearby objects just going a kind of shiny black. Hunting out the textures associated with the material, shows they have gone black in the content browser

This can be fixed by either opening them, or right clicking and using ‘reload asset’.

It’s REALLY annoying, and also happens after packaging.

A quick look at the log gives ( in this case )

So the system is obviously loading textures that have not been referenced recently. But it’s actually turning some of them black. Why!?

Anyone with a solution, please…?

[Sergey_Skyline]

I might have a different problem, but my investigation has led me to textures and DDC.

I’m using virtual textures, and in some random cases, textures become different: the material displays other textures instead, and on the game map, the material appears completely different.

And the funniest thing is that when migrating my working project from 5.5 to 5.6, I either get materials with the wrong textures (they can be temporarily restored by reopening the textures), or a bunch of different errors, for example:

Assertion failed: RecordTypeBaseOffset + SegmentIndex * 2 + 2 <= NumRecords

EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0xffffffffffffffff (and other variations)

Assertion failed: SingleShaderBindings.ParameterMapInfo.TextureSamplers.Num() == 0

Crash in runnable thread RHIThread

…often in modules like:

UnrealEditor-Renderer.dll

UnrealEditor-RHI.dll

UnrealEditor-D3D12RHI.dll

I can’t reproduce the problem reliably/stably.

However, projects created directly in 5.6 don’t seem to have these problems (I’m not entirely sure). But all my projects migrated from 5.5 have various problems with materials, even if the projects were almost identical at different stages.

It seems I’ll have to revert back to 5.5, at least because of reflections (we have Nanite, but the reflections look like broken geometry and have AO artifacts. We have to disable nanite, lose performance but get high-quality reflections).

Overall, it’s a massive pile of issues that look like a tangled knot of nodes.

[ClockworkOcean]

It does sound related. Jumbling up textures is worse than turning them black!

Could it be that a mask texture ( which selects between variants ) is black?

I do think there’s a bug, possibly some sort of unchecked bound / overflow in this DDC.

I’ve seen others who have this after release!

[Leomerya12]

Have you run this at all through ChatGPT?

I’m on the Forums a lot less because it helps me work through bugs/scenarios in real time.

(Keep in mind, you can upload photos, scripts, crash logs, etc. to GPT.)

[ClockworkOcean]

Thanks for the tip

Not this particular thing yet, as literally EVERYTHING I ask GPT, it gets wrong

Telling me to use nodes that don’t exist, procedure that don’t make sense etc.

[Sergey_Skyline]

Does this sound like your case?

The Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker

[ClockworkOcean]

Ah, there was for a moment, but…

No, this affect all materials and textures.

But thanks

[MostHost_LA]

@ClockworkOcean

During gameplay or while using the edtior, there will be a bit FAT hitch

Can we verify this isn’t your PC?
Like anyone else sharing the same issue or you having witnessed the same issue happening on 2 different devices?

Could be a billion things, but the way you describe it its the GFX flushing memory. Or a page file exceeding. Possibly also a file read issue or timeout (as in your HD may need defragging?).

Anyway, at a bare minumum give the engine version

Oh, and also… file path lengh. SOMETIMES it loads even if the path is over the windows limit, but then goes bad or invalidates when the mips load.
I guess you can rule it out by renaming the directories in the content browser to single chars for testing?

[ClockworkOcean]

I do still have another PC handing around, but I’m not at the point where I’m going to reboot that yet. I see a regular supply of others on this forum with the exact same issue. Would be a bit of a coincidence if we all had the same hardware issue.

This PC is much better than the last one in terms of everything. So I doubt its a resource running out. Obviously I don’t have a HDD

Currently on 5.5, it’s been a problem with all versions of 5.5.

Path lengths are all the same, its the same project.

Thanks for casting your mind over it, though

I did the sacred ‘bin the derived data cache’ move yesterday. Everything’s refreshed now, and it hasn’t happened so far. I’m only moderately optimistic though

Some people discussing in 2024

500×500 2.84 KB

I’m encountering an issue since I moved to Unreal Engine 5.5 (and higher) where textures and materials sometimes appear completely black. This affects both the previews in the Content Browser and the materials applied to meshes in the scene, causing the entire mesh to appear black. Strangely, the issue resolves itself temporarily when I manually open the texture in the editor, after which everything looks normal. Additional Information: Current Engine version: 5.5.1 The issue occurs sporadical…

I think this rules out hardware

[MostHost_LA]

To run the engine I have it installed directly in c within a single letter folder.
Stuff clients give us is so whack that the paths really become problematic.
If it continues to bug out, give it a try.

Also, if you are on windows you have no guarantee that windows is running as it should - now they even force update you and roll you back by “mistake”. It’s worse than ever…

Top issue with page file overload is caused by the new windows Spyware with the “memory recall” disguised as “we will see everything you do too” thing that screenshots you - but I only had it die out on a setup with 4 8K tvs for obvious size reasons… anyway, worth making sure you know what the OS is doing regadless since I brought it up
Who doesn’t love exta work?

I havent seen anyone else reporting this so far (but I also dont really read the “rendering” tab that often so it means nothing.*
Best of luck!

[ClockworkOcean]

See the post I mentioned above, it seems Epic are aware…

I would never allow that recall virus on my system

Oh mamma…

I’m waiting for 5.6.1 to side-step teething bugs…

[MostHost_LA]

Lol March 8 - at this rate you’ll have a Merlin level beard if you quit shaving until they release it?

At least you have something to go on though… cherrypic their git instead!

[ClockworkOcean]

I can’t believe I didn’t come across that post before. Very weird…

Also the enshitification of google, mind you…