Why does Unreal Engine sometimes crash when editing parent materials from engine content?

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Hey everyone,

when I edit certain parent materials in UE5.4 that come with the engine (like ones under the Engine folder), Unreal will sometimes crash right after I save. For example, I recently edited the M_SimpleVolumetricCloud material. All I did was add a Multiply node to the Extinction output and expose a scalar parameter for control. As soon as I hit Save, Unreal crashed.

What’s strange is that it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it saves just fine. But other times it crashes instantly , and only looks like to happen with builtin engine materials, not the ones I created myself.

Do you guys also experience this behavior sometimes? Is this a kinda known issue with editing engine native parent materials? Should I be avoiding edits on those altogether?

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I always got this issue too. Now I usually make a duplicate of the material and use/edit the duplicated version.

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Yeah, I would really recommend avoiding editing these materials. Always make duplicates and make your own edits there, otherwise your edits may have unforseen consequences later.

As to why exactly it’s crashing, I’m not entirely sure. Likely some mix of instantly needing to update a large chunk of the engine, or perhaps some incompatibility with some Cpp code affected by those materials.

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