Why are my renders are coming out black? Sometimes seeing frames, sometimes not.

[mrquinnd1]

Hi, if anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated as I am really stuck now. My renders in my sequence are all coming out black, not all the time but almost inconsistently they will come on and go away back to black screen. I’ve been through a lot of potential solutions for this, turning down resolution, turning off lights. Deleting everything potentially problematic meshwise. I think there’s either a bug or something wrong with the memory management side of my PC because sometimes I queue these I get a good first couple frames in renders and then it goes back to black. I have monitored my log and GPU as well but nothing meaningful shows up. Can anyone advise a potential fix? Thanks

[BRGEzeHulton]

Hello @mrquinnd1, I haven’t found a direct solution to your issue, but I found some suggestions from the community that may help you resolve it.

• Camera Cuts Track: Ensure the “Camera Cuts” track in Sequencer is properly linked to your camera and spans the entire sequence duration.
• Sublevels Loading: Verify that all relevant sublevels are set to “Always Loaded” in the Levels panel.
• Exposure Settings: Disable auto exposure in your CineCamera or Post Process Volume and set a manual exposure value.
• Anti-Aliasing and Warm-Up Frames: In MRQ settings, enable “Render Warm Up Frames” and adjust “Spatial Sample Count” and “Temporal Sample Count” appropriately.
• DirectX 12 and Path Tracer Issues: Consider switching to DirectX 11 if possible, and reduce render resolution or disable features like Nanite and Lumen if not essential.

I came across a discussion about the issue of “the rendering sequence appearing black.”

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Hi I have been trying to render a sequence but every time I try it just comes out as completely black screen for the entire duration of the sequence. I have working and built lights as persistent level. I tried rendering as images or video but nothing works, it always comes out completely black. Does anyone know how to fix this?

tricks about movie render

Fix Your Movie Render Queue Crashes with These Easy Tricks! #unrealengine #ue5 #gamedev

PATH TRACER Explained - Unreal Engine's Underrated Tool

I would like to know the following:

1. What type of camera are you using in this sequence?
2. Are you utilizing Lumen, Path Tracer, or any advanced rendering features such as Ray Tracing or Virtual Shadow Maps?
3. Which version of Unreal Engine are you using, and what is your GPU (brand and model)?

[mrquinnd1]

@BRGEzeHulton

1. Which version of Unreal Engine are you using, and what is your GPU (brand and model)?

Thanks so much for getting back to me! I have implemented some of these into more renders but it still resolves to black. Below are my specs.

Engine Version Unreal Engine 5.5
GPU NVIDIA RTX 3060
DirectX Currently using DX11 now

Camera Type CineCameraActor
Camera Cuts Track can verify the “Camera Cuts” track is properly set up in Sequencer and spans the full duration of the shot
Exposure Settings:** Auto exposure is disabled in both the CineCamera and Post Process Volume. I’m using a fixed manual exposure value in camera
I have the right sublevels visible and the others hidden.
Lumen:** just disabled via Project Settings
Nanite:** I’ve used the console variable r.Nanite 0 and attempted to convert all meshes to static where possible. not sure if I need to do more to turn that off? Or if I add those cvars from the video, although my engine.ini looked a bit different from his so I was apprehensive. And even when I delete most of the meshes it still renders black from my sequencer. But I will still try this.

• Path Tracer: Not currently in use, though I’m open to trying it if it might better suit this sequence
  Virtual Shadow Maps is Enabled
  Anti-Aliasing & Warm-Up Frames:* In Movie Render Queue, I’ve enabled “Render Warm Up Frames” and have adjusted the sampling settings. My warmup is 32 but I increased to 1500 like he does in the video but still has the same result.
  Sublevels relevant sublevels are set to “Always Loaded”
  However, for better context and I suspect to be somewhat the cause is I wonder about the assets in my scene. I did import some elements from this Fab asset pack (linked here: Dark Ruins Megascans Sample | Fab). But 90% of these I deleted. It’s a small cave section I duplicated (rocks and decals) it would have used nanite and lumen by default but I was hoping I got the scene to be basic enough to use in renders with a couple of my assets.
  Let me know your thoughts? I’ve been battling this for the past week or two, and it feels like something is hitting a limit. The render preview looks to kick off normally sometimes and outputs 1 or 2 frames, sometimes a whole shot, but then quickly resolves to black frames later on after thinking I’ve fixed it . For a while, I was only getting renders if I rendered not by shot but from the beginning of the timeline,the first couple shots would always be black but then I would start getting some rendered frames. Hence I added more warmup frames per shot, but this didn’t seem to change it.
  
  
  Included a preview so you can see the amount of stuff that’s there. Also worth noting I have a stylised post processing on although this is very inexpensive it’s practically just a filter overlay.

[BRGEzeHulton]

Hey! I’m not a specialist in Movie Render Queue, but I’ve been digging through the forums and found a few similar cases that might help you troubleshoot this issue. They’re not exact matches, but they share patterns like black frames, missing renders, and sequencing issues. Here’s what I found:

Renders going black when using DX12. Switching to DX11 helped resolve it in several cases.

MovieRenderQueue rendering black screen when using DX12 in UE5.1

Hi. I’m using MovieRenderQueue to render a series of HQ screenshots. This worked fine in UE5.0. However, support for using Decals with the PathTracer was added in 5.1, which is something I need. Therefore I’m in the process of switching to UE5.1. Discovered this with 5.1P1, but P2 has the same issue. Now, to use the PathTracer in need to use DX12. But with DX12, the MovieRenderQueue seems to behave oddly, even when not using the PathTracer. Sometimes I just get a black image. I’m rather new to …

This one came down to sublevels not being set to “Always Loaded,” which caused MRQ to miss them at render time.

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I’m rendering a scene I made, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I do it keeps rendering black. Here’s a look at my sequencer: [Imgur] These are my render settings: [Imgur] And here’s what the render preview window looks like: [Imgur] I’m on Unreal Engine 5. The same thing happens if I use the sequence renderer or the legacy movi…

Auto Exposure left on caused completely black frames. Switching to a fixed exposure value in the CineCamera solved it.

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Hi there, Can a mod move this topic to the designated forum? I couldn’t post anything anywhere so im trying here. I find these forums very confusing… anyway: I keep getting this error upon rendering: [no shot CineCameraActor1] Due to Temporal sub-sampling or handle frames, evaluation will occur outside of shot boundaries (from frame -1 to 0). Section MovieSceneMediaSection_0 (Binding: None) starts during this time period and cannot be auto-expanded. Please extend this section to start on fram…

Sometimes MRQ doesn’t render properly without enough warm-up time. Increasing “Warm Up Frames” and tweaking sample counts fixed it for some users.

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Hi! I am trying to render with the movie render queue in 5.1, but during the warm-up frames, the Render Preview is black. This did not happen in 5.0. This is an issue because Virtual Textures do not update before the render starts. I have a heavy asset that needs 40-50 frames for the textures to load. I am planning to render with the path tracer, and it is therefore not a good idea to render 50+ unnecessary frames for every sequence. Also, the VT does not seem to update when rendering a sequen…

Hope something in there helps! You’ve clearly tried a lot already, so maybe one of these angles leads to a fix.

[mrquinnd1]

Ok thanks for all that, still encountering issues unfortunately. Hopefully will be able to find a fix soon.