SpaceKit troubleshooting

Terrain shadows look wrong, or the planet looks flat-lit

Cause: virtual shadow maps are off, or the project is not running Shader Model 6.

Fix: check the required renderer settings and confirm the editor is running DirectX 12. Restart the editor and let the shaders recompile after changing them.

Planet materials render grey or default

Cause: the material failed to compile. This is almost always a missing renderer setting rather than a broken asset.

Fix: look in the Output Log for Failed to compile Material, then check the required renderer settings.

The character falls through the terrain on spawn

Cause: terrain streams in asynchronously, so the ground may not exist yet when the player spawns.

Fix: spawn the player above the surface, or wait for the first chunks to finish building.

Spawned characters fall through the terrain

Cause: the terrain collision under an actor from the actor spawner has not finished cooking.

Fix: turn on bApplyTerrainLoadDelay on the USKPlanetGenSpawnerAsset. It briefly zeroes gravity on a spawned ACharacter so terrain collision has time to cook before it falls. It only affects Unreal’s CharacterMovement gravity.

Foliage floats above the ground

Cause: a noise layer’s frequency is finer than your vertex spacing can represent, so it aliases into per-vertex jitter.

Fix: reduce the layer’s frequency, or raise Resolution / lower Tile Size.

The ship does not align to gravity

Cause: the ship found no gravity provider.

Fix: in a level with no planet, the ship falls back to Unreal’s world gravity, which is what you want in space. On a planet, confirm that the planet’s gravity radius reaches the ship. Gravity strength and radius are in the planet’s Planet|Gravity category.

The ocean looks flat, with no shallow or deep tint

Cause: the depth tint is baked into vertex colour when the water builds, so the water mesh needs enough vertices to interpolate it. With Water Adaptive Tessellation off, the mesh uses the fixed Water Sphere Subdivisions count and the colour bands or flattens.

Fix:

• Turn on Water Adaptive Tessellation (Planet|Water).
• Check that the planet’s Water Material is depth-aware: MI_PlanetWater for spheres, MI_PlanetWaterRing for rings. M_SimplePlanetWater is the deliberate flat-colour fallback for projects that would rather not pay for the denser mesh.
• Water Depth Colour Range (cm) sets the depth at which the water reaches its full deep colour. Smaller values give a tighter turquoise band at the coast.

Ring water looks flat when planet water is fine

Cause: ring water tessellation scales with the ring, not the terrain tile size, and the ring band’s axial subdivision is bounded by an internal vertex budget.

Fix: reduce Ring Length or raise Water Sag Tolerance to spend that budget differently.

Volumetric clouds are missing on UE 5.4 or 5.5

Cause: the UE 5.6+ cloud reconstruction fix raises r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode to 2. In SpaceKit 1.0 it was also applied on 5.4 and 5.5, where it blanks volumetric clouds. Those versions never had the problem it corrects.

Fix: update to SpaceKit 1.1, where the fix is compiled in only on 5.6 and newer. On an older build, entering r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode 1 in the console restores the clouds.

Cloud edges look blocky on UE 5.6 and newer

Symptom: a blocky, sky-coloured fringe along foliage edges seen against cloud.

Cause: UE 5.6 changed how the reduced-resolution volumetric cloud render target is upsampled. The depth-aware filter breaks down at high-contrast silhouettes such as tree edges. UE 5.4 and 5.5 are unaffected.

Fix: SpaceKit corrects this automatically with High Quality Cloud Reconstruction on ASKPlanet (Planet|Atmosphere, on by default). Whenever a planet’s atmosphere becomes active, it raises r.VolumetricRenderTarget.Mode to 2 and r.VolumetricRenderTarget.UpsamplingMode to 4. It only ever raises these values, never lowers them. If you still see the fringe:

• Confirm the planet has Enable Atmosphere ticked. High Quality Cloud Reconstruction has no effect without it.
• Check that your project is not forcing those console variables lower in [SystemSettings].

Turn the option off if you manage volumetric cloud settings yourself.

The atmosphere does not appear

Cause: the level has no Sky Atmosphere, or the planet’s atmosphere is not set up.

Fix: put a Sky Atmosphere (and optionally a Volumetric Cloud) in the level, then on the planet tick Enable Atmosphere and assign a USKPlanetGenAtmosphereAsset. See the quick start.

An exclusion volume has no effect, or its pad is not flat

Cause: exclusion volumes are not enabled on the planet, the volume’s flatten or suppression settings are off, or the volume is not aligned to the surface.

Fix:

• Tick Enable Exclusion Volumes on the planet.
• Check the volume’s bFlattenTerrain, FlattenStrength, bSuppressFoliage and bSuppressGrass settings.
• Click Align To Planet on the volume so it rotates flat to the surface beneath it.
• Adjust BlendRadius (default 10000 cm) to change how far the ground eases back to natural terrain. Where volumes overlap, the strongest blend wins.

Spawned actors do not appear, or disappear

Cause: the spawner’s filters exclude the area you are in, or the actors are out of range.

Fix:

• Make sure the USKPlanetGenSpawnerAsset is assigned on the planet and its ActorClass is set.
• Check the Biome, Min/MaxSlopeDegrees and Min/MaxNormalizedHeight filters against where you are standing.
• With bRespectExclusionVolumes on, nothing spawns inside exclusion volumes.
• Actors stream in around the player and are despawned beyond SpawnRadius. Spawning is also budgeted per frame (MaxSpawnsPerFrame), so actors appear over several frames rather than all at once.

My PlanetGen Blueprints do not accept SpaceKit actors

Cause: SpaceKit’s classes are independent copies. ASKPlanet is not ACLMPlanet, so Blueprints written against the standalone PlanetGen or Starship plugins will not accept SpaceKit types, and the other way round.

Fix: pick one set per project and write your Blueprints against it. See the FAQ.

Changing a default in the plugin does not update an actor already placed in a map

Cause: Unreal does not retroactively apply changed defaults to instances already placed in a level.

Fix: edit the instance in the Details panel, or delete it and place it again.

Still stuck?

Ask on the CodeLikeMe Discord. Include your SpaceKit version, your Unreal Engine version and, if you can, a screenshot of the problem.