Unreal Engine 5 crashes when opening a level

Hello, I am relatively new to Unreal Engine and am unable to open up my file due to reoccurring crashing occurring at the same point during loading of a level. Whilst working on a landscape scene and was in the process of importing megascans files into Unreal Enginge 5, as well as editing a material setup, the engine crashed. I have tried restarting but it (and any previously saved levels) also crash when compiling shaders.

I am unsure how to proceed and would welcome some support. Can someone please help?

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Hey there @ArchitectingAlex1! Welcome to the community! Sounds like it’s probably a crash related to the visuals in one way or another. Could we see the crash logs? If you don’t have the debugging symbols, I’ll include a tutorial that explains a bit about them, how to install them etc.

Disclaimer: Epic Games is not liable for anything that may occur outside of this Unreal Engine domain. Please exercise your best judgment when following links outside of the forums.

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sometimes deleting the intermediate and saved folders can help

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Thank you for your speedy reply. I will try my best to send over the information as possible. Here is the call stack however as a new user I am not able to attach any of the information in the crash file.

At the time of the initial crash I was tinkering with importing megascan materials and being prompted for datata tables (which i was selecting to test out what would happen without understanding how that works…). Currently the crash seems to happen when compiling shaders. Though it also crashed once upon selecting opening a level with the Landscape Material Instance open in a tab.

Assertion failed: IFileManager::Get().MakeDirectory(*DumpDebugInfoPath, true) [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\ShaderCompiler\ShaderCompiler.cpp] [Line: 3714] Failed to create directory for shader debug info ‘D:/Projects/Unreal Engine Projects/04 Undini Tutorial Series/Second Attempt/Detailed_Landscape 5.0/Saved/ShaderDebugInfo/PCD3D_SM5/M_Landscape_GodTier/FLandscapeXYOffsetVertexFactory/TBasePassPSFPrecomputedVolumetricLightmapLightingPolicySkylight/0’

UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Engine
UnrealEditor_Core
UnrealEditor_Core
kernel32
ntdll

Thank you for your assistance!

From the error returned it seems unreal couldn’t create a directory. Could it be a file permission problem? Did windows ask for write permission by any chance during the import?
Could it be a disk space problem? (did your d drive fill up during crash)?

I had been asked multiple times about permissions (all of which i granted). I’m not too sure why it’s asking for permission.

I seem to have plenty of space with my drive D having 858 GB free

How do I handle permission to make sure all are set correctly?

Thank you, tried that but sadly did not work!

In the windows task bar type in “allow” you should get “allowed apps” with the windows defender shield icon

Here you can add in programs that can use protected folders without problems. Check that unrealeditor is added here.

This might help fix the problem. It could also be a separate file (worker process) that unreal uses that could also need adding.

It looks like I have controlled folder access switched off so do not think that is the cause.

Could you please elaborate on the second point? Is that about a folder missing from my project file, or is that still relating to restricted folders?

Its not that a folder is missing its the fact that unreal could not create the folder it needed

[File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\ShaderCompiler\ShaderCompiler.cpp] [Line: 3714] Failed to create directory for shader debug info ‘D:/Projects/Unreal Engine Projects/04 Undini Tutorial Series/Second Attempt/Detailed_Landscape 5.0/Saved/ShaderDebugInfo/PCD3D_SM5/M_Landscape_GodTier/FLandscapeXYOffsetVertexFactory/TBasePassPSFPrecomputedVolumetricLightmapLightingPolicySkylight/0’

Seems it need to create a folder for landscape shader debug information.

Have you tried cleaning your temp folders?
Maybe your lanscape got corrupted in a bad disk write?

Try deleting temp folders

  • Intermediate
  • DerivedDataCache
  • Saved

Let the project rebuild its cache and see if the problem persists.

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I deleted those files and the problem still occurred.

What’s more I have tried recreating the project in a completely new file/folder and have just experienced the same crash.

A quick search about “failed to create directories” suggests that the program unreal engine should be saved on the same drive that the project is being saved onto, which mine is not. Is this a possible cause for the issue, or am i mistaken with something else?

Thank you for you help though!

I have apparently somewhat resolved it by moving the base folder higher up the list of subfolders on my drive. Before calling this solved though, can someone please explain the reason for this and best practice in terms of file creating?

Currently I have dropped the project folder on the initial drive which is not ideal, as previously it was in a series of subfolders helping to organise my work. I would ideally have the project folder a bit more organised but do not want to recreate the crash.

Thanking you in advance

Unreal does not have to be on the same drive as your project. I have many prototypes that are on a different drive and all works well.

Windows theoretically should not have a problem with folder depth or name length, but it may be a limitation on the end of the engine.

I know that when you make a new project and give it a long name there used to be a warning before creating it.

It could be the filename / path name length. The path that was listed above was 248 chars. The default limit was 256 chars not counting drive letter and null termination. There appears to be a new feature after windows 10 to allow longer file/path names but you need to activate it.

I personally would try to simplify the file paths and not nest too deep in files as it becomes more and more difficult to read and traverse.

So, you could try renaming some of the longer directories to something simple and see if that fixes it.

Here is the link from Microsoft for the work required to extend the file limits. I have NOT done this, so proceed with caution.

everything is relative paths so you can literally move your entire projects folder to another drive and restart the launcher
then browse to a proj and open, the next time you reboot the launcher the projects should populate.
you can also have projects in more than one location but it can get messy.
I use U:\unreal\projects