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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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 thus, leaving outdated values in there might have unwanted side effects.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
I’m having the same issue. Sky atmosphere completely blackens the level. Other levels in the project working fine, though. This program is the buggiest thing I’ve ever seen. It has turned into the biggest waste of time in my entire life. I’m 54.
I recently ran into an issue where the Sky Atmosphere in my Unreal Engine project was appearing completely black. This happened when I was working on a VR project, and I discovered that the VR template, by default, uses forward rendering. After some research and testing, I found a solution that I hope will help others facing the same problem.
The Problem:
When using forward rendering (which is enabled by default in VR projects), the Sky Atmosphere component doesn’t render correctly, resulting in a black sky. This is a known issue with how forward rendering interacts with the Sky Atmosphere in Unreal Engine.
The Solution:
If You Need to Use Forward Rendering:
If your project requires forward rendering, you should switch to using the BP_SkySphere instead of the Sky Atmosphere component. The BP_SkySphere is more compatible with forward rendering and should display the sky as expected.
Switching to Deferred Rendering:
If your project doesn’t specifically require forward rendering, you can switch to deferred rendering. To do this, go to Project Settings > Rendering and set the default shading model to Deferred Rendering. This will allow the Sky Atmosphere component to work properly, providing the correct sky and atmospheric effects.
By making these changes, I was able to get the sky rendering correctly in my VR project. If you’re experiencing a black sky with the Sky Atmosphere in your VR project, I recommend checking your rendering settings and making the adjustments mentioned above.
Hopefully, this helps anyone else dealing with the same issue!
changed to deferred rendering, but while volumetric couds and lighting look awesome, I can’t get rid deep blackness inbetween the awesome looking clouds, how is this done ? I had it, blue was there and gorgeous, but had a problem,and had to revert to project copy.
This worked for me too, solved two other issues at the same time. For anyone else reading this, I also started my game using the VR Template, and had the black sky between clouds, plus jittering and generally awful visuals.
I’ll keep this one in the backpocket, thanks!
Your solution fixed the issue for the first step. Then I set Directional Light Actor in the details panel of BP_Sky_Sphere to “DirectionalLight”, and the second step was fixed.
. Thanks you Christoburr!
