Reference Viewer behavior

That does indeed sound like incorrect behavior.

I tried reproducing it on UE 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6 preview, but I can’t seem to reproduce it. These are my steps, can you see if they diverge from yours?

  1. Create a new empty Material and a new empty Material Function.
  2. Right click the Material and click “Create Material Instance”.
  3. Open the Material Function and put a Constant4Vector to have an output.
  4. In the Material, drag in the Material Function and connect it’s Output pin to the Base Color pin of the Material.
  5. Save the Material, the Material Function, and the Material Instance assets.
  6. Reference viewer shows Material Instance -> Material -> Material Function dependency chain.
  7. Delete the Material Function from the Material, save the Material.
  8. Reference viewer only shows Material Instance -> Material dependency chain, Material Function doesn’t have any dependencies or references.