Water not rendering in movie export

[ClassyAlpaca]

Dear Community,

I am new to Unreal and have just gotten into designing my first maps based on YT tutorials, as well as applying basic camera movement and animation for the renders. I’ve had a curious and annoying issue pop up on my second project, where my render doesn’t show the water/ocean that is a centerpiece of the set I’ve made.

I tried playing around with the water surface and body settings, disabling culling, which has apparently helped some people online, but couldn’t crack the issue.

Does anybody have experience with this and where the issue may lie?

The project was made in 5.3 and then upgraded to 5.4 recently.

Cheers!

[kentzversky]

I can confirm that. Seems Water Body render is not supported in UE 5.4 via Movie Render Queue. It’s fine in editor as well as in a gameplay, but not in render.

To reproduce:

• grab a fresh UE 5.4 installation
• create a new level
• add Ocean
• add Level Sequence and Camera
• render via MRQ

Would be grateful for a workaround. Thanks.

[ClassyAlpaca]

Hi,

Seems like either the new hotfix or the console command can fix it: r.water.waterinfo.rendermethod 2

It’s from another thread opened on this topic: WaterBodyOcean Unreal 5.4 and Movie Render Queue - #6 by comlys

Kind regards.

[kentzversky]

@ClassyAlpaca

r.water.waterinfo.rendermethod 2

Thank you so much! That did the trick. I confirm that water is rendering now with console command provided.

Thanks for posting it here.

[John_CTS]

THANK YOU!!! Just spent the last 2 months working on my scene, and this morning I was all excited to start my first test renders in 5.4 and to my horror - NO WATER???

This CVAR saved the day for me!

[KULTRA_LTD]

Thank you a lot!
This console command works!

[KULTRA_LTD]

Try to enable Game Overrides in MRQ. In my case rendering of the level of the Water Body Ocean was corrected after enabling in in the settings in Movie Render Queue.

[comlys (Shaun Comly)]

Yes we should have fixed it so you don’t have to use the cvar anymore.