When using virtual textures, which I have to do at this point because the scene is getting way too detailed, the textures break in this very weird way.
These are, as you can probably see, Quixel megascan assets, but the textures don’t load properly. Even on the one I have selected here one of the textures, the normal map is broken.
On the smooth rock here’s what it looks like in the content browser:
All of the textures look right, but the material is just a muddy mess.
When I open the textures it becomes clear though:
This is what happens, Unreal treats it as a single color and we’ve got no idea why it does this or how to fix it. I’ve tried searching but I haven’t been able to find anything.
This is on a 4090 with a i9-13900KS with 128 GB RAM.
Not sure, but my immediate hunch is that it might have something to do with mipmaps. The lowest quality mipmap is typically just a single pixel that is essentially an average of the full image.
If anyone in 2026 is getting this issue, I was able to find a workaround, but not really fix it. I tried reimporting everything into 5.7.1, and it worked fine. Then, when I went back to 5.6.1 it told me I needed to run updates for 5.6.1, so I clicked okay. It ran the updates and restarted UE5. I created a new project and imported everything, and it worked. I went back to my original file for 5.6.1, tried to import everything, but it didn’t work. Which is weird because the new project it worked on was for 5.6.1. I guess it was from some old settings from before the updates that stayed in that file. I renamed the following with _OLD after it in the Epic_Unreal_Engine folder:
Config
DerivedDataCache
Intermediate
Closed Unreal and reopened it so it would create all the defaults using the upgrades, and also delete the old cache. I was then able to import my texture files with the VT on them. They uploaded in the Material Editor fine, but when I looked at my 3d object, the geo was all messed up. I had dismissed a warning when loading the project, saying that I need to enable Shader Model 6 (SM6 for nanite assets) by going to Project Settings > Platforms > Windows > D3D12. So I enabled it, restarted UE, and reopened my project, but I got the same texture issues again. Since it was still working for the test project I did earlier, I created a new project and imported everything into this one, and it worked. Luckily, I didn’t do too much work, so I didn’t have much to import. If I had, I would have been pretty upset. So if this is your case, it might not be a good workaround for you. Sorry.
I guess that 5.6.1 needed this update to fix whatever issue it was having with Virtual Textures and UDIMS, but the update won’t fix old files for some reason. Something to do with Nanite and whatever shader it needs to work. I am following tutorials using 5.6.1, and I like to stick with the same version as the tutorial so the instructions match. Otherwise, just stick to the newest versions or try to run as many updates as you can on an older version before working. I didn’t get any update alerts until I opened 5.7.1 and went back to 5.6.1. So if you don’t know how to run updates, just try that.
*I did make sure Virtual Textures were enabled before doing all this, but it didn’t help.*
I was able to get the files to import by migrating from a file that did work and enabling
“Virtual texture support on mobile” in Project Settings (even for PC).
If issues persist, you can also try to adjust your “Virtual texture pool size” or use “Bulk Edit via Property Matrix” to check if individual textures still have virtual streaming enabled.
