I tried making a new shader with refraction and it did not work. I tried checking and unchecking separate translucency, I used the fresnel method and plugged textures straight to it just to get a result, and nothing worked. Finally, I saw one of my old materials that did have refraction, and when I rebuilt the shader (just went in the material editor and hit “save,” the refraction was gone. I moved my project from 4.7.6 to 4.8.1 and upgraded to 4.8.2, and refraction no longer works.
As a side problem, I noticed my GPU particles were no longer colliding with the scene depth. This may have to do with some corruption of the file. I can try to make another project and move everything there, again, but if the issue is repeated with others I’d like to mention it here to get some closure on the issue. Thank you.
Branch: Binary (from Unreal Launcher)
Build: 4.8.2, but the issue was from 4.8.1.
My PC is an i7 3770k 3.4 Ghz CPU, NVIDIA GT 640 GPU, 12 GB Ram, Windows 8.1 OS
The issue occurs every time in every instance I build a material for refraction: refraction no longer works, regardless of engine scalability settings. The issue also occurs in brand new projects made in 4.8.2.
Thank you for your report. We will begin investigation into this issue as soon as possible. If we are unable to reproduce the problem, or need more information, we will follow up with some additional questions for you. Otherwise, we will post an ‘Answer’ once the issue has been logged in our bug database or we have a solution for it.
In the meantime, please be sure to review our suggestions for how to report a bug, and feel free to edit your post if you have additional information to provide:
Can you look at your Engine Scalability and insure that you are set to EPIC in all categories and that you are using Shader Model 5 for your Preview Rendering Level? If that is not the issue, can you upload a copy of your project’s Config Files here?
I have tried to replicate the issue you are describing internally and have not been successful as of yet. Can you post a picture of what is being rendered and your material setup for a sample refraction setup you are using? In addition, can you make sure that you are running the 353.30 Nvidia Driver and post your DXDIAG here?
OK. The first image shows a smoke material and a torch in the level: it has some distortion effects, but otherwise it is set up with the proper fresnel shader where even a low IOR of 1.02 would normally produce exceptionally distorted results. The second picture is the DXDIAG display page. My driver for some reason is not listed as 353.30, it’s some very odd number. It was last updated in March, about 4 months ago. I didn’t think it would need to be updated so soon. I’m updating as I type to see if this is the problem.
OK, the driver installation crashed and NVIDIA’s Geforce Experience locked me out of opening the program again. I’ll get to a screen that says the driver did not install, and the only option is to close. I tried redownloading the software, but I got the same message again. I’m completely locked out of updating the driver and out of options. This may be the issue.
I needed to restart the computer But of course. I mean, modern day computers rely on trillions of components in an insurmountable array of possible hardware configurations and millions of people who write programs for it. It’s a wonder they work at all!
The driver update fixed the distortion for the water pane, but not for the smoke particles, which had absolutely no distortion at all, even on epic settings and with separate translucency toggled on and off. So, the answer was at least half-correct.
Well we are half way there. If you can try replacing the fresnel material function with the Fresnel node and plug in the normal as above in the Normal input of that node. Sometime Material Functions do get adjusted from version to version and I have not looked at that function in a while. Let me know if that corrects the smoke, if it does I will look into what changed in the Fresnel Material Function.
But of course. I mean, modern day computers rely on trillions of components in an insurmountable array of possible hardware configurations and millions of people who write programs for it. It’s a wonder they work at all!