This has now happened several times lately using 4.22.3. I will have set up a level, imported a scene and various objects into the level, set up all of the volumes and lighting to get it right, do some light builds, save everything and upload changes to Github for access using other computers at the office or mobile and all will be good.
Open the project again later, start making some edits, maybe do another lightbuild, maybe reimport some assets and BAM! The perspective view port goes completely black. There is no light anywhere, either in the interior or the exterior. My BPSkysphere has gone completely dark and the interior lights are completely dark. I have searched for solutions and thought I found it when someone said they had the same issue and found it was a gamma setting they changed using the console command. However, when I was following the solution, that is impacting the entire editor. I theread that some sort of quality settings somewhere either in the post process volume or some settings somewhere can dramatically impact the scene lighting but I could never find these “quality” settings.
If I create a new level using the default setup and copy everything there, I seem to be back in business but I need to set up the lights again.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I can post screenshots of anything one would need if that would be useful.
EDIT: Yup, just to confirm, if I create a brand new Level in the project using the default template where there is a BPSkysphere and then copy all geometries and lighting from the “black” level to this new level, I am back to the expected scene lighting, both interior and exterior. I really need this resolved as I cant keep doing this. I have not had to do it previously on other projects.
EDIT 2: I just deleted an asset in this new level, imported a new asset through datasmith and the scene just went completely dark again. WTF? So I thought maybe it was just my laptop. I downloaded the project through Github on my desktop, opened the level and things were good. Deleted an asset and then imported a new asset through Datasmith. Boom, viewport goes completely dark.
I am going to check that out only because I am interested to see if that could have been a factor. However, I think I have found the culprit and it is related to the Datasmith import. There is a strange file being brought into or made by Unreal with recent imports and if I delete that file, the scene immediately goes back to my last build lighting. I am looking into it and will post the file name/ type and confirm this is the issue later.
Had this happen to me. Figured out it was a user error in my case as I had bumped the exposure all the way up for something else I was doing and then never reset it. I don’t know why setting the exposure on one level would effect another one, but once I readjusted the exposure I had my scene back.