Reflection capture bugs

In my current level / persistnat level… any new reflection capture added does not contribute to the scene…

On top of that some of the current reflection capture actors are bugged. For example the attached screenshots… 1 looks super bright in regular view but fine in reflection view mode.

If you move one and then hit undo it turns that reflection capture black and instead makes another reflection capture in that same room become the super bright one… Kind of hard to explain… but moving then hitting undo makes hte reflection capture black and resets another one to look super bright… See the screenshots… This bug has been in this level since before 4.18… maybe even before 4.17

I don’t know how to reproduce it exactly. Its possible that i opened up some of the sublevels seperately instead of through the persistant level, and added reflection captures indepedently and then later returned to the persistant level after having those levels seperately… Not sure… Other then that I can send you the link to the project via unreal forums …

Also, this bug has been around before 4.18… probably 4.17 or 4.16 is when I started experiencing it with this level.

Hi kurylo3d,
Thanks for providing this report. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to reproduce the issues you’re describing. I tried opening up the “Sun Temple” level (one of the free content examples from the “Learn” tab in the Epic Games launcher) in engine version 4.18.1 and adding some additional reflection capture actors throughout the scene, then moving them and undoing them, etc.

Can you please provide either a clear set of steps to reproduce this issue in a new level or send us a sample project so we can investigate this? Thanks.

hey I just resent the link… let me know if any problems

I did receive your message on the UE Forums, and I replied on 11/16 that the link to your project didn’t come through in your message. It’s been a few days, so I am going to mark this post as Resolved for tracking purposes. If you’re still experiencing the same issue, please feel free to reply here with additional information and we will follow up.

On screen 2 you have one of Spheres selected, but I can’t see any debug spheres around, should be two - one smaller and another bigger.

I think you have just bad Reflection Sphere setting and it not touching world, just air around. In short words, spheres are too small.

Selected Reflection Sphere should look like this:

https://i.imgur.com/pOoOBni.png

With yellow wire frame spheres shows influence radius. If radius will be very small it not working. If will be default, what is 3000 it will be not work too, because it too big. In this sample radius is 300 and in my real project it have very different sizes, depending on scene.

Those are actually box reflection captures and do cover the walls… (notice the hard line where they end…)so thats not the problem… They contribute but are bugged…

also in my scene its a bug because i also cannot add any new reflection captures… In fact i could put a small sphere reflection capture… or large one… and they simply do not update or contribute at all…

Well, in scene like this you should use anyway Sphere captures instead box and tweak it for design what is not easy but necessary. On scene like this I have more than few sphere captures with different radius, I use box captures occasionally only, in places where it’s possible.
edited:
I did simple test with box reflections. It have small influence and I can’t see change when add more than one - it’s why I use spheres only - a lot. And some issues - after removing all reflection captures - box or/and sphere, I still see basic reflections even after rebuild reflections - maybe it will gone after project reload. Generally they are not perfect solution for very realistic reflections, I posted somewhere request to add customizable captures, where you can select surfaces with which capture will work only, like somewhere in other engine. With this in Unreal, it works nice for 99% players, they not care if non natural reflections sometimes and generally this is ok, because we creating games only, not matrix.

You are right with thin walls and rooms. For now I use spheres, always few with custom radius what is enough for test scenes but hard to make bigger levels. This solution with customizable sphere captures, where you can select their walls only would be best - I used it a lot designing maps for other engine.

Anyway, if bugs it need to check of course! Good luck, I need this functionality too, very.

Boxes are a necessity for me… very thin walls… next room over… But again, thats not even the issue. No new sphere captures can even be utilized because of this bug. They do not update… wether the radius is 200 next to a wall or 3000 covering the level… it doesnt contribute to any part…

Hi kurylo3d,
I’ve investigated the issue in your project and when I open any of the maps, then change the Viewport view mode to “Reflections” I can clearly see that adding any new reflection capture actor does indeed contribute to the scene.

Additionally, I was not able to reproduce the issue you described as “If you move one and then hit undo it turns that reflection capture black and instead makes another reflection capture in that same room become the super bright one.”

All of our testing so far leads us to believe that the issue you are describing is not actually a bug with the Unreal Engine, and so we are not able to take any further action on this. If you still believe this may be a bug, please provide steps for us to reproduce the issue, and we will continue our investigation.

Thats not possible! I have been able to reproduce this on 2 different computers… a laptop with a gtx 980m and a desktop with a gtx 980. Not only that but this is a problem thats been in there from 4.16 to 4.17 to 4.18… and maybe even before that.

Did you test it in the main persistant level? Or did u test it in the sublevel only? It will work fine if its in the sublevel only.

I urge you to please try again in the main level that contains all of the sub levels. Opening it from there.

Ill record a video for it if you like. I mean im already showing you screenshots and giving you the level which i have no doubt will be replicated on your end if you open up the correct persistant level.

can i get a confirmation on which level you tried to open?

Yes, I’ve tested it in multiple levels, including the main one. Here is the result when I add a single reflection capture actor to your main level…
Before

After

If you still believe this may be a bug, please provide steps for us to REPRODUCE the issue, and we will continue our investigation.

Fun fact… you just revealed another part of the bug. Take a look at your new reflection capture… Its a reflection from an entirely different room away from that reflection probe. So the reflection is still bugged. The room thats being reflected is the correct color in the first screenshot in the “before”… now “after” looks like its a reflection from a room 2 floors up maybe?.. maybe one of hte hotel rooms?
Im guessing in your test what you did is delete every single sphere reflection capture then create a new one… which clearly still is bugged… or maybe u just deleted the box reflection capture in that room and added a new sphere one which is also… bugged…

Also, If necessary I will record a video of me simply dropping one in. I recently noticed if i delete every single sphere reflection capture in the level and then place a new one then it does effect the environment and contribute… only problem is its using a reflection from another room probably from another previous reflection capture… so thats broken…

That being said if i delete every single box reflection capture as well… then the sphere reflection capture seems to come in correct with the correct location… Though i dont want to replace every single reflection capture throughout this entire level… not sure if the problem will return at that point if i did

It almost makes me wonder if there is some sort of limit on the amount of reflection captures.

Fun fact… you just revealed another part of the bug. Take a look at your new reflection capture… Its a reflection from an entirely different room away from that reflection probe. So the reflection is still bugged. The room thats being reflected is the correct color in the first screenshot in the “before”… now “after” looks like its a reflection from a room 2 floors up maybe?.. maybe one of hte hotel rooms? Im guessing in your test what you did is delete every single sphere reflection capture then create a new one… which clearly still is bugged… or maybe u just deleted the box reflection capture in that room and added a new sphere one which is also… bugged…

Also, If necessary I will record a video of me simply dropping one in. I recently noticed if i delete every single sphere reflection capture in the level and then place a new one then it does effect the environment and contribute… only problem is its using a reflection from another room probably from another previous reflection capture… so thats broken…

That being said if i delete every single box reflection capture as well… then the sphere reflection capture seems to come in correct with the correct location… Though i dont want to replace every single reflection capture throughout this entire level… not sure if the problem will return at that point if i did

It almost makes me wonder if there is some sort of limit on the amount of reflection captures.

Also… if you place a new reflection capture from scratch without deleting any of the old ones… i bet you it will not contribute at all to the reflections regaurdless of its radius.

Yes, there is a limit to the number of reflection captures you can use (341 to be precise) and you have over 400 reflection captures. I deleted a lot of them to get it to work, but it works as intended. I highly recommend reading the following documentation to get familiar with Reflection environment in UE4.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/ReflectionEnvironment/index.html

is the limit per sublevel? or do i only get 341 with all sublevels included in that number?

The 341 limit for reflection capture actors applies to the World, which includes the main level and all sublevels.
Here is how the main level looks with 340:

Here you can see adding another one to reach the 341 limit works as intended:

And here I’ve added an additional one which has no affect since it is above the limit: