Sky Atmosphere is straight up black and won't change

Development Rendering
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23

Here are the Project settings that solved this issue for me in my VR project.

-Project Settings-
Default RHI DirectX 12
SM6 TRUE
Allow Static Lighting FALSE
Forward Shading FALSE
Reflection Method LUMEN
Global Illumination LUMEN
Shadow Map Method Virtual Shadow Maps
Generate Mesh Distance Fields TRUE
Enable Virtual Texture Support TRUE
Support Hradware Ray Tracing TRUE
Use Hardware Ray TRacing when available TRUE

I saw this in a youtube video a while back and decided to write it down, thank you youtube person! :slight_smile:

2 Likes
24

I have the same problem. I’m working in the CitySample and made a duplicate of the Small City Level to work in. The original level is fine, but after months of work in my duplicate level (making a short film - over 160 Level Sequence shots) - it now is totally black! The only light source is the sm_sun in the far horizon and a few street lights. Any point light I introduce does not work.

Screenshot 2023-11-23 164151
Screenshot 2023-11-23 1641511150×816 260 KB

I’ve tried copying over settings from the original small city level - without success. It does not seem to be a “project” based problem - only a level based problem. Fortunately, one solution is to load the original small city level and open the Level Sequences in that, but I still need to reimport (copy/paste) a bunch of assets.

25

Update: SEMI-FIXED !!!
I switched the PostProcessVolume back to Auto Exposure and light returned. I had been using it for a while on Manual exposure (without issue). I guess the manual exposure stopped working… Hopefully this helps someone else.

26

it works. thanks

27

Thanks for this! I encountered this problem when switching to Forward rendering (which is also recommended by meta for VR developement. Hopefully this can be fixed soon.

28

Forward shading does cause this. Forward shading is not recommended for anything other than low end/mobile, but it has such a low cost. I have a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, getting like 30fps with MINIMAL trees and 20 looking straight with foliage and no trees. When I turned on forward shading, it was actually better. It always stayed at it’s fps cap, 120fps, but the sky was black.

The best thing to do that works for me is to put a texture cube in the sky with the sky textures on it. If you are targeting other platforms, but need desperate optimization, turn off lumen and use screen space. You can find it under Project Settings > Rendering > Dynamic Global Illumination Method.

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I use the VR template for my project when this problem happens. Well, this setting works for me :partying_face:. Thanks you Christoburr!

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(try to go to your “Config/DefaultEngine.ini” and delete the “[/Script/Engine.RendererSettings]” section. thats how i just solved my sky athmosphere not showing up.

this also worked for me in multiple occasions when render issues popped up.

you might notice that the set of options here change with engine updates. thus, leaving outdated values in there might have unwanted side effects.

be sure to backup the settings so you can set it in the editor project settings to your needs.)

Thanks a lot, this was the solution for me.
Kind Regards

31

how to fix:
remove
config
DerivedDataCache
Intermediate
Saved in project folder, and dont forget about make copy the project.

32

You may have clouds in a sublevel.