Attached, see two pics of what I am about to describe.
I have ‘dead zones’ for level geometry in my level. When I try to put a simple level geometry square into a scene, there are large areas that the mesh will just refuse to render. As a matter of fact, if I bump the new level geometry into other level geometry, they both disappear. As I move the rectangle away from the wall, notice that the ‘dead zone’ ( down the middle of the room ) still exists and still cuts off the render of the mesh.
What’s up with this? I have checked for subtractive boxes and they are all accounted for. I’ve even CTRL-A’d the scene to make sure there isn’t something transparent behind other stuff.
You appear to have encountered and angered the UnrealEd Goblin, and he’s stolen some of your geometry.
More seriously, this is a long standing issue with Unreal and it’s BSP system - the issue is commonly caused by brushes that overlap, particularly subtractive brushes or those that have been edited in geometry mode. Many who work with brush geometry would advise you to stick to the grid, avoid overlapping, use geometry editing carefully, and avoid subtractive brushes where they are not needed. Fiddling with your brushes should help you identify which one is the cause, it’s almost always one intersecting with the area where geometry is visibly broken.
ambershee is correct in saying that the Geomtry Brushes in UE4 are still very much a work in progress and are meant primarily for level prototyping. We are working on Geometry brushes.
For the issue you are having I want to check to make sure that you don’t have a subtraction brush (I don’t think that’s the case, but lets check to make sure.) Go into the Wireframe mode and look for an extra subtraction brush in the level. While looking for the subtraction brush in wireframe, make sure that your brushes are on the grid at least down to the 1 snap. Then try rebuilding your level at this point to make sure all lighting and geometry has been built.
Oh geez… Ok. So, I will go back through the entire stage and make sure that the level geometry is all snapped to the grid, even if it uses a value of 1.
I have already checked in wireframe mode and there are no extra subtractive boxes anywhere in the vicinity. The area is clean aside from the square not rendering.
I’m not very sure about you guys highlighting the level geometry tools in the first official tutorial series, saying that their primary use is for level creation, only to find out 2 months later that they are not. That’s not a bug issue, though, so I’ll save that discussion for another time. Just doesn’t seem very right for me to be finding out 2 months in that what you’ve said I can use to build, I really can’t.
I will try the snapping to grid, which will take a few hours of time to go piece by piece ( unless you guys know of a quick way to force everything in the map to snap ).
I can certainly understand your frustration with BSP/Geometry brushes. You certainly are not alone in this arena. There are some known issues and even on our Trello UE Roadmap we are planning on improving these at some point. As of right now it’s on our backlog of things.
When working in game development BSP/Geometry brushes are great for rapidly prototyping a level to make sure the flow of it works. You can see this process by watching the video that our Senior Designer Jim Brown did for Intro to Level Design. The map that is in this video is also available for your use if you open the Content Examples from the Marketplace > Open Map >Leveldesign_workflow.
If you want to look at some more information you can also open the map in the Content Examples that is related specifically for the BSP/Geometry brushes. Content Example > Open Map > Geometry_Editing.
Further documentation on brushes can be found on our Documentation page.
A take away quote on this page is and the first thing that is written is:
There are a number of methods in
which you can create the geometry that
comprise your levels in Unreal Engine
4. Generally speaking, it is better (more efficient performance wise) to
use Static Meshes when creating the
geometry. That said, since creating
Static Meshes requires some sort of 3D
modeling software, you can use the
Geometry Editing tools to quickly
block out your levels for gameplay
prototyping.
