We’ve run into an issue with v35.10 where the default Chapter 5 Time of Day Manager (TODM) lighting does not appear as expected. With v35.10, we are temporarily reverting all published UEFN islands to Chapter 4 TODM which will cause certain visuals, such as the sun/moon trajectory, to appear differently. Please note, your TODM settings will not be changed when creating new islands or editing existing ones in UEFN.
Islands made in Creative will remain on the Chapter 5 TODM, and interiors may be darker than expected until this issue is resolved.
We are working to solve this issue and bring the Chapter 5 TODM back as soon as possible to published islands. We have also rescheduled the publishing lift for The Walking Dead Universe islands to May 16 at 12 PM ET, giving creators more time to make adjustments.
Here are some steps you can take in UEFN until this issue is resolved:
You can preview how your island will appear now in UEFN by switching to the Chapter 4 TODM.
The Chapter 4 Time of Day Manager shifts sun/moon positions by 180 degrees. You can restore your world orientation in UEFN by going to the World Settings and adjusting the TODM Rotation Z by 180°. Alternatively, you can also adjust the time of day through the Day Sequence device.
If fog or clouds look different in your island, they can be adjusted with the Day Sequence device
Dusk and sunrise may appear more saturated with the Chapter 4 TODM. You can alter color settings in the Day Sequence device or utilize post processing volumes to achieve your desired aesthetic.
We know this isn’t ideal, and we appreciate your patience.
This whole time of day manager stuff is getting out of hand. If memory serves me right, this is the second instance where the Ch5 DSA doesn’t look/function the way it is intended to. Why not just keep the new Day Sequence system opt-in? Many of us prefer the look of the ‘outdated’ chapter 2 legacy TODM and the fact that it is less resource intensive (no Lumen, no volumetric clouds on any scalability setting, etc).
Also, we’re on Season 3 of Chapter 6 and there is still no Ch6 DSA to use in Creative/UEFN. What gives?
Can we get more info and more timeline for this issue?
Are we supposed to update all of our maps to make sure the TODM4 lighting is good but then have to go back to the TODM5 and then readjust that lighting? This is after updating all our TODM4 lighting to TODM5 lighting already recently.
What is the time line for all of this? Will this be fixed in a few days? Many of us updated many maps to make sure the new lighting was close to our old TODM4 lighting. The last thing I want to do is update a ton of maps only to have the issue resolved in a few days only to have to undo the changes and resubmit. But if this will be like this for a few months we might have to go in and change now.
I’m sure you can understand how this feels to us UGC creators. Can we get some info on why this is happening?
At this point I think it’s better to just go independent of the built in managers, I’m cooking up a tutorial for this custom lighting setup I did, for now the trick is to just have a skydome mesh with a material set to “Is Sky”. Then set Skylight to “Realtime Capture”. You can animate material parameter collections through a sequence.
Map code : 1850-7602-6602
This is not it. My map got completely screwed over by this temporary change.
I had been using the Chapter 5 TODM. After v35.00, there was a noticeable tinting issue (the tint color was the same as fog color), but it was still somewhat acceptable. Now the TODM got reverted to the Chapter 4, the map looks terrible.
Why can’t we go back to the TODM that’s prior to v35.00?
Please can creators have the option to choose which TODM they would like?
The skydomes had more creativity and are more quicker and easier to use than the newer TODM.
When the new TODM replaced the skydomes, it had no options for positioning the moon, blacked out fog and no wavy clouds.
I was trying to make unrealistic skies matching to my skydome designs but it was technically impossible. Wrote feedback about it on the forums.
I wanted to take a sec to thank our community, and our community managers, for bearing with us. The incoming feedback is super important even when things don’t going smoothly – and please keep it coming!
The entire team has been looking at options to get things back to normal as soon as possible, and we are also focused on process improvements to help minimize disruptions like this one.
Looking to the future, we are also listening to all the feedback regarding where you want the tools to go. So keep those requests coming as well!
Again, thanks for bearing with us and we’ll report back with any updates.
BTW sixonetwo games, we LOVE to see this! We are committed to having the building blocks to allow creators to build their own lighting setups more easily – and not feel forced to only use the Epic Games provided solutions.
We recently made a video that takes a peek behind the scenes of our TODM:
The super complicated (and fragile) bit we have to deal with is all the scalability fallbacks for the various platforms… If you want to know more specifics about our TODM please ask away! We can do a deeper dive video or post some details here in the forums or discord.
We’ve resolved the issue with the CH5 Time of Day Manager (TODM). Published UEFN islands will no longer be forced to use the CH4 manager.
With this fix, Fortnite Creative islands should no longer appear darker than expected under Lumen. Please update your Fortnite client to see these changes.