Edit: Moved to Bug Reports, as this seems to be an unaddressed (and certainly unintended) issue. Added reproductions steps.
I made a simple 10x300x300 quadrilateral mesh and imported it into the editor with the intention of using its distance field representation as a replacement mesh for a planar wall asset. The mesh DF looks great on its own when used for the mesh it was generated from (below, on the left). However when used as a replacement mesh for a simply 300x300 plane, it becomes thin and distorted (below, on the right, applied to the starter content cube).
Here’s another view that better shows the distortion (perspective from the opposite direction):
I would expect that the DF representation of the mesh would be the same regardless of the actual SM asset it’s being used on. However clearly this isn’t the case. This is not a problem I’ve seen with other meshes, and doesn’t appear to be a problem with larger meshes, either (as a test, I created a 200x200x200 cube, and it worked just fine as a DF replacement mesh for this plane, as do basic engine shapes).
This problem occurs in a fresh project with default settings. To reproduce:
- Start in a fresh project with Mesh Distance Fields enabled.
- Import via FBX a simple 10x300x300 rectangular prism.
- Import via FBX a simple 0x300x300 plane.
- After mesh distance fields are created for both, open the plane asset in the Static Mesh editor.
- Set the Distance Field Replacement Mesh to the 10x300x300 prism you imported.
- Visualize mesh distance fields to see the issues listed above.