Per the title, the Shallow Water Body actor (Advanced Water Plugin) fails to render when built to an .exe. Particularly, your log gets spammed with 2 errors repeating (which I suspect is the root cause):
- LogShallowWater: Warning: UFFTOceanPatchSubsystem::GetOceanNormalRT - Ocean simulation system not loaded
- LogPlayLevel: Warning: UAT: [2025.08.07-23.45.39:830][994]LogShallowWater: Warning: UShallowWaterRiverComponent::Rebuild() - ocean patch normal RT is not initialized
Notes:
- You do not get this warning while playing in the editor.
- It does render just fine in the Editor, it only fails when you package up and run an executable.
- Yes, all the Water plugins are enabled, double and triple checked.
How To Easily Reproduce:
- Create an empty project.
- Enable all Water plugins.
- Add Terrain.
- Add Water Body River actor.
- Note: If you compile here, the REGULAR River actor looks just fine, no issue, no log warnings.
- Add Shallow Water River actor.
- In the Shallow Water River Actor, add the Water Body River actor you created in the Source River Water Bodies.
- In the Shallow Water River Actor, Hit Reset at the top (aka Simulate).
- Let simulation finish, then Bake (at the top next to Reset).
- In the Shallow Water River Actor, change Render State to Water Component with Baked Sim.
Everything looks great in the Editor. Now try to package it up (e.g. use Platforms → Quick Launch → Windows). Once the Editor is done building everything and deploys your game, note that you can no longer see any rendering of the Shallow Water River.
Final note: the baked simulation IS there, I’ve tested this extensively with for example Buoyancy, and it’s clearly using the baked sim and river component, but it’s not RENDERING it.
Anyone have any idea how to get it to Render and/or solve the above errors? Reminder, yes, the Water Plugins are ALL enabled, restarted, etc. I repro’d this in a completely blank project, it fails.