Scene Color Node Too Dark?

Shrooblord · December 15, 2019, 11:26am

Hey there,

I’ve been trying to design some Materials using the Scene Color node, but I’ve hit a bit of a snag. The Materials are way too dark. In all video footage I’ve seen of this node, it causes the Material to effectively become invisible. But mine is clearly visible, and tinted to what looks like 80% grey or so.

This is what it looks like in-game and in-Editor:

It’s just a sphere with the Material slapped on it. To the right is a BP with the Material I had been designing.

But, as you can see, the Material Editor seems to believe this Scene Color node should work as expected, showing an almost invisible Material:

This is quite annoying, as it completely messes up the appearance of the Material I was going for.

Any ideas on what’s going on?

Shrooblord · December 18, 2019, 3:32am

I’ve made some progress. Turns out, some Actors that were using SceneColor that I know work correctly in their Projects of origin were also displaying this behaviour in my Project. So I decided to create a new Level with nothing in it but a skybox, and test again.

This time, SceneColor worked as expected.

This leads me to believe my issue is with my Post-Processing Volume, or other lighting setup.

I will report back once I’ve located the cause.

Shrooblord · December 18, 2019, 11:50am

Turns out the culprit was Eye Adaptation and the Post Processing Volume’s EV100 settings under Lens > Exposure.

Here you can see my original setup. With Min EV100 and Max EV100 both set to 1,0, the effect is as described in the original post, with Scene Color Materials showing up as being too dark.

Here is a screenshot with those settings turned off (default auto-exposure settings). Now the SceneColor Materials look too bright.

Finally, after some tweaking, you almost can’t even see the Materials using SceneColor anymore, as expected. The EV100 settings I settled on are Min EV100 of -0,3 and Max EV100 of 0,0.

I am still a total newbie at everything Lighting- and Post-Processing-related in Unreal Engine 4, and many of these settings not only confuse me, but drive me into a corner that makes me think I’ll never get the project to look like what I want it to. But sometimes it’s just as simple as finding the right two dials, and setting them appropriately. I’m sure I’ll get more of a hang of it with time… or I’ll end up hiring someone who has the proper know-how.

Thanks for your attention. I hope this helps someone else in the future.