My water meterial becomes Black only on static meshes when I don't add a skylight

Hello everyone i’m pretty new using Unreal Engine, I have learnt the basics at school, and now that i’m out of it, i’m trying to get deeper using it.

So my problem, is that I created a swimming pool using a BSP and adding a water material. It worked good until I created a static meshe from that BSP and rebuilt the light, from there, my water material became black. When I add a skylight, the water is blue again but I prefer using only a directionnal for more realistic lightning. I’ve tested on some brushes to see what’s wrong and there are the results :

Water Material on BSP = works fine
Water Material on basic cube = works fine
Apply Water Material on BSP before turning into a static mesh = becomes black
Turn a BSP into a static mesh before applying the material = becomes black
Using a small plane 400x400 ( Architecture folder coming with the starter content) and apply the water material = becomes black
Using the Floor template (Geometry folder coming with starter content) = works fine

That I want to know, is if it is buggy or not ? Why it works on the floor template even though it’s a static mesh but the only one that works fine. Or if I really must have a Skylight or if it’s normal that my water becomes black and what i need to do (except adding a Skylight) to give its blue color back.

Thanks everyone, sorry, i’m not a native english speaker and I still have some issues with the technical language…

No its not really “buggy” but that Autogeneration produces pretty crappy UVs and default settings on the Mesh. But if you want to fix it open your Mesh. Look under the “Static Mesh Settings” Category. Click on the triangle at the button to open the advanced settings. There is a Option called “Light Map Coordinate Index” set it to 1 instead of 0

But for your Water Material you realy dont want to use Baked Lighting at all so simply Set your Pool Mesh to “Movable” instead of Static.

A General tip on the way: BSPs used for Blocking out your Design and you should replace them with Static Meshes down the road but please dont use the Convert to Static Mesh Option unless you export it to a 3D Modeling Software and use it as a Base for your real Model and also fixing up all UVs etc. the Convert Option does not give you a result you like in most cases :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Good Luck and have Fun

Thanks for your answer, i’ll try when i can. For the moment I just picked up the floor template into the Geometry folder to make my pool water surface. This works fine. For the moment I create some scenes only using BSP for building walls, rooves and grounds. I find them easier to modulate with material settings and things like that. The problem is that i’m not really at ease with 3D software like Max. I don’t know what exactly to do in it.