Render out so darker than preview (auto exposure closed) (SOLVED)

Development Rendering
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Hello all firstly I’m making cinematic movie ,
i search about my problem but everyone saying closing auto exposure solving this problem ,its not working for me .When i play my squencer on unreal engine editor everythings look perfect as i want .When i render out doesnt matter which format (i tried all ) its coming darker .I mean its like no lighting for some scenes ,i cant even see my charecter in some shots .

Shortly all i want is render out same as preview couse i take all camera angle ,shots ,design and etc for that preview .
Should i take high resolution screen shots for every frame one by one ,when i take HRSS everythings look normal

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Which method did you chose for rendering? Just asking, because if you use the new Movie Render Queue with it´s tiling function, then it tends to disable auto-exposure, works only with manual set exposure.
If it´s rendered with Sequencer, auto exposure should work,a nd it should render like it´s displayed in the editor while using “Game Settings” (In editor the tab lit, bottom, check if “Game Settings” is activated).

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Thanks a lot for your reply .I’m using Sequencer method .Engine version is 4.23.1 .I didin’t check it before i will try it but couldnt find it yet .Can i ask you again if i cant find where is it ?

edit: i found it ,its checked already

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Can you try to set your exposure manually via a post process volume , so that you do not need the auto exposure? Maybe with a completely new test camera added to the scene, that you use for a testrender.
At first glance, it sounds like an exposure problem (like, active in the editor but disabled or not kicking in for rendering), but i am no expert in that regard :frowning:

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this is just a frame for explain about different
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and this one is all my settings .If someone notice something wrong with them please let me know .I’m just stuck with render like 3 days :confused:
Imgur

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I’m simply going to list some things which could be the problem, or a part of the problem:

In your project settings, Auto Exposure is disabled.
Exposure Compensation is not enabled in the PPV. It’s also at a somewhat low value.
Slope in the Film category of PPV is kinda high. This is from the Filmic Tonemapper doc page; it’s the description of Slope:

“This will adjust the steepness of the S-curve used for the tonemapper, where larger values will make the slope steeper (darker) and lower values will make the slope less steep (lighter). Value is in the range of [0.0, 1.0]. [0.0, 1.0].”

Why did you not include the General settings of the Render Movie Settings? It’s not expanded.

You have water on a dark material in a dim / dark place. Why is “Enable alpha channel support in post processing” not checked? Alpha determines opacity and other factors, and it’s for post processing which means materials are being affected by the actual use of alpha in pre-programmed, pre-set algorithms and functioning of the post processing settings. I know it’s experimental, but it could help.

A few other suggestions:

In project settings, Enable “Extend default luminance range…”
Enable “Temporal Upsampling”
Disable “Render unbuilt preview shadows in game”, at least immediately before rendering out
Enable “Use High Precision Normals” in GBuffer Format (found in Rendering), then for anything with reflections in it or strong reflectivity, enable “Use Full Precision UVs” and “High Precision Tangent Basis” in the mesh editor for those actors

In PPV,
Enable the “Samples per pixel” checkbox for RT AO in the PPV
Enable Ambient Occlusion (non-RT, above RT AO), and set a few values for it to function in combination with RT AO
Reduce Max Bounces of RTGI

In Render Movie Settings,
Try unchecking “Enable Texture Streaming”

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Thanks a lot sir . You gave me so much informations ,I’m not expert on unreal engine ,just working for 8-9 months ,i did everything what u said now its compiling shaders from begin .
But i didn’t change my slope on film category(its still 0.8 ) becouse i tried to set to half and almost all colors gone . I mean it was pale for all materials .Now i’m waiting for compiling shaders to done .When its over i will take render again to see result .
My english is not well enough .I gues you already know from my post :slight_smile: Thats why i’m missing some parts .
Thanks again sir ,if i still have problem can i ask you again please ?

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Yeah, ask any time. I’m not an expert either. But there’s some things I suggested that I figured could solve that darkness problem.

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In the future if anyone has this problem .Just do everything same what @presto423 but do not check (dont use ) Render movie settings>Use compression and dont forget to Enable Texture Streaming (“ETS” )
I tried all combination no compressiın no ETS ; doesn’t work
compresion no ETS ; doesn’t work
combression with ETS doesn’t work
No Combression with ETS Work
This is how its worked with me ,If its not work for you you can try that combinations (If i am wrong please someone edit me ,i dont want to give wrong information )

There is only one problem ,after those settings im getting too much crash when i render but im still happy to get after 1-2 try .Its probably couse of my PC equipment so you dont need to worry about it

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last question sir ,after those setting i am able to take render without any problem in 1920x1080 but geting crash with 4k render .Its like , i can take 4k render for shot 1 but cant for shot 2 and shot 3 and again can take 4k render for shot 4 and etc… before those setting i was able to take 4k render for my all shots (with that dark problem ofcourse )
which settings could be reason of crash ,do you have any idea ?

crash error ;
Assertion failed: [File D:/Build/++UE4/Sync/Engine/Source/Runtime/Windows/D3D11RHI/Private/D3D11Util.cpp] [Line: 249] Direct3DDevice->CreateComputeShader( (void*)CodePtr, CodeSize, NULL, Shader->Resource.GetInitReference() ) failed at D:/Build/++UE4/Sync/Engine/Source/Runtime/Windows/D3D11RHI/Private/D3D11Shaders.cpp:243 with error E_INVALIDARG

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Edit: Enable alpha channel support in post processing (experimental one ) was the reason to get crash with 4k

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How do you know enabling Alpha Channel Support caused the crash with 4K? Did disabling it bring it to working again?

It that’s the case, it might be a limitation of the movie render queue with 4K and some setting(s). One of the things about 4K is it’s a much higher output level (4x the output of 1920x1080p), so other aspects of the render need to be compensated for or adjusted to get it to render more efficiently and correctly. What are your computer specs? Another thing could be HDR is not supported at 4K resolution for rendering with it. I don’t really know exactly what it involves to get 4K working. These things I’m referring to are more hypthetical guesses than how I know it works exactly.

If there’s something not rendering, while other shots render ok, I would think enabling alpha channel has limitation(s) then. It would require some testing to figure out, but it’s probably connected somehow if it all works when disabling alpha channel support in post processing.

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Just a note on 4k renders. I had crashing UE with 4k renders pretty regularly, because my comp was/is to weak… or rather, all the different sample settings, that worked fine for 1920x1080 resulted in to much payload for my comp at several 4k renders.
However, since 4.25 and Movie Render Queue, you can tackle this problem really well with the tiling function. So upgrading to 4.25 and switching from sequencer rendering to rendering with Movie Render Queue and it´s tiling might be something, you should consider for further projects :wink:

Of course, this comes with it´s own set of problems, since not all effects work with tiling (like auto-exposure), but i am pretty sure, that most of them can be bypassed and compensated.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/…ort/index.html

Ok, you will still create all the sequences and cuts with sequencer and save them, just for the rendering you switch to that.

(i just don´t get, why they deactivate all those denoisers for tiling, i usually don´t touch them, but that prob needs more testing ^.^ )

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Yes sir after disable it ,everythings working perfectly for me .No more darkness with your setting and never crashed again after disable .I can get 4k render with no crash right now .I dont know why i dont know how but its working .Like i said before im just a beginner

edit:Very very much thanks again sir .You are life saver

Here is my specs btw ;
CPU: intel core i7 6700k 4.2 Ghz 8 mb cahce
GPU:MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming x 8gb ddr5 256bit Nvidia
MotherBoard: MSI Z170A Gaming M5 ddr4 3200 MHz
Memory : Corsair 16 GB(2x8GB) Vengeance Led Red 3000 MHz CL15
SSD: Samsung 256 GB 950 Pro M.2 V-Nand (read speed 2200 mb)

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Yeah, not sure what causes the limitation with the alpha channel support for post processing. Perhaps it’s simply too much rendering data, or an error somewhere in the processing of it. Those specs sound mostly capable of doing a render, have heard of similar or lower specs running Unreal alright. The CPU is a bit low in cache, but it’s not as bad as it could be. You should check into rendering capacities of the DDR5 series of graphics cards. I remember reading something about their limitations, but don’t remember exactly what. That’s definitely sufficient RAM, I think, especially since it is faster and low latency, and the SSD sounds fine too.

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I have been having very similar issues.

Eventually I stumbled on a different cause - I’d been using VLC player to replay the exported movies.

When I used Windows ‘Movie and TV’ player the results matched my UE editor window far better.

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THIS OMG!!!

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My VLC was completly changing my color, look at that!! Ty so much, was gettin crazy trying to find a solution!

This was my InEngine view, and now I am finally satified with the result!

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