I am currently trying to understand how volumetric clouds work. Therefore I activated the Volumetric Plugin in my installed UnrealEngine V 5.0.1. I had a look into the example shaders/ materials for the clouds and it seems that some of them are broken or maybe misconfigured by myself.
Therefore I´d like to discuss how some of the example materials are supposed to be used and how they should work.
So far the only Material that is working for me, is
Engine > Plugins > Volumetrics Content > Content > Sky > Materials:
M_VolumetricCloud_02_Profiles_PaintClouds
I pretty sure that at some point the, M_VolumetricCloud_03_MultipleProfiles_CF_ApproachingStorm Material Instance was working, but now idk why, it´s not working anymore.
How to replicate?:
Create new Level with Time Of Day Template
Select Volumetric Cloud Actor in Outliner
Change Cloud Material to → M_VolumetricCloud_03_MultipleProfiles_CF_ApproachingStorm
Expected Result:
visible clouds, that look like described in the material.
Current Result:
no visibile clouds at all
What I have tested:
I Thought that I maybe messed up the original content of the Plugins folder. Therefore i deinstalled the Engine completely and reinstalled it. As far as i know (please correct me if im wrong) this should reinstall and reset all egnine content, which also means the plugins that ship with the engine by default. Unfortunately the issue persists, after reinstalling.
Created a new project, added a new level and changed the material to the mentioned Approaching Storm Volumetric Cloud Material Instance. Result: Also did not work.
Checked the master material, in this case > M_VolumetricCloud_03_MultipleProfiles_Campfire_Master for errors. There are none and the material compiles just fine. Also trying to just recompile the material, by moving a node and apply + save, does not change anything.
I guess my last approach will be, try to figure out what every node does, and understand how the material is supposed to be used.
Which is not quite easy, since Im a beginner, there is very little documented code or documentation on specifically for this material, nor example Maps or BPs that use this specific Material.
So I would appreciate any help from anybody that knows far more than I do
Can anybody tell me, if this is just a “ME” issue, or if this “bug” is a bug and therefore can be replicated? Furthermore, does anybody know how this specific material is supoosed to be used or maybe configured with volumetric clouds?`
This material doesn’t even exist in UE4 so I’m not sure which version of the engine you had it working in.
I glanced at the material and I believe the reason nothing is appearing is because it’s sampling RT_Profiles which is an empty render target. There’s nothing to show because there’s nothing there.
I recalled Ryan Brucks mentioned generating distance field profiles from curves so I assumed that was what this is for. Looking at the blueprints folder, it is used by the BP_CurveProfileTo_RT blueprint. Unfortunately if you try to place this BP in a level, it will silently fail its validation check (silent because there is nothing plugged into the invalid output pin) and the reason for that is that there is no RT assigned to JumpFlood Result RT. If you drop this bp in a level, create a render target and assign it, then the material will work… kind of. I mean, it renders, but it looks pretty bad.
I’ve never seen this material before so I have no idea what it is supposed to look like.
Hey, sorry for making it not clear, I´m using Unreal engine 5. It looks pretty much, as the material name describes it. Its a curly wave like, very thic cloud front, that looks very dark an creepy.
There are 17 or so cloud materials provided in the Volumetrics plugin, and the only one working is “M_VolumetricCloud_02_Profiles_PaintClouds” as mentioned by the original post.
I found this post which which seems to have a solution involving render targets, however it is fairly vague and I haven’t been able to follow it with any success:
I also found this video about fixing volumetric clouds post-UE5, however it involves a compilation error in the materials, and none of the materials seem to have any compilation errors for me:
Same issue here, none of the skies on the volumetric materials folder is working on 5.2.1 just the standard one that has those deformed ugly clouds. (when selecting any of the materials makes the sky turn clean blue.
It’s still the same issue with 5.3.2. With the default cloud material, the volumetric cloud component works fine. With any of the materials from the volumetric plugin it doesn’t work.
