UE4 4.14 crash while re-importing mesh; re-opened levels look broken/corrupted

Development Platform & Builds
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1

Hi everyone. This is the first time I have seen this one. First, some system info -

  • Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
  • 32 GB RAM
  • Intel Core i7-6700k CPU @ 4 Ghz
  • Geforce GTX 960, NVIDIA drivers 376.33

And I just switched to 4.14 a couple weeks back.

I have been following the excellent “Shooter Tutorial” series and I’ve reached a point where I wanted to extend and expand on what I had made using those tutorials. So I was working on an outdoor shooting-range style level (I’d been iterating on it since the new year). Yesterday, I noticed that the normals on the barrel of my trenchgun looked reversed. To confirm the issue, I went into Maya, picked a few of the normals, and reversed them, then re-exported the FBX.

Back in UE4, I right-clicked the trenchgun model and selected “Re-import”- the Editor immediately disappeared and gave me the “An Unreal process has crashed” window. I thought “No biggie, I ‘Saved All’ like ten minutes ago.” But when I re-open my levels, they look…broken. All the editor icons are flat, 2d instead of billboard-style. And my models appear mostly invisible. Here’s a few examples - tunnel level:

123201-debug_tunnel_error.png
123201-debug_tunnel_error.png1207×591 157 KB

Tunnel section - Maya model which no longer appears. Note the flattened static light icons:

123202-debug_tunnel_geo_error.png
123202-debug_tunnel_geo_error.png1207×591 112 KB

Here’s my outdoor shooting range area:

123204-debug_range_error.png
123204-debug_range_error.png1207×591 385 KB

And one of the barracks models I added in the background, selected in the World Outliner:

123206-debug_barracks_perspective.png
123206-debug_barracks_perspective.png1207×591 381 KB

Here’s that same model in the model viewer:

123207-debug_barracks_correct.jpg
123207-debug_barracks_correct.jpg1352×754 168 KB

And lastly, here’s the shotgun I re-imported. Note the translucency which is not seen when viewing the material in the Material Editor:

1352×754 154 KB

Thanks in advance for taking a look at this, and for any ideas you may have. I’m also trying to debug on my end. Happy UE4-ing!

2

OK, I figured this out. Definitely an editor display bug of some sort - I opened the Config folder for the project, and moved all the INI files out of the folder. I then re-launched the project. Billboard sprites looked correct, default map looked fine. So I closed down and dragged each INI file back, one by one, into the Config folder, and re-launched the project each time. I was trying to see which file caused the issue. Weird thing is, when I dragged the final INI back into the folder (last one I picked was DefaultEngine.ini), and re-launched, everything looked fine again. Billboard sprites and models all look normal.

Not sure how this “fixes” the issue - but it appears re-launching the project with an empty Config folder re-sets things somehow, possibly the same way trashing Maya prefs re-sets that software. In any case, should anyone out there encounter a similar issue, try emptying out the Config folder and re-launching your project.

3

Hey, i had the same problem few weeks ago on a project, i just abandonned it, and it happened again to me today on an other project, worked yesterday, broken today.

After reading your solution, i did the same, removed all the .ini, and worked again, but when i put them back, the project was still broken. So i thought about something i did yesterday that might cause the trouble, and in fact in the project settings, I set the near clip value to 0, so i opened the DefaultEngine.iniand changed the NearClipPlane=0.000000 to a value like 10 ( other than 0, and it fixed the issue :slight_smile:

4

You are a life saver, thank you so much for posting this. I nearly had a heart attack when I launched my project and it was all sorts of busted. I had been playing with the near clip plane also and just changed it back to 10 (I had set it to 0).

Thanks again :wink: