Unions disappearing / turning invisible after creation

[frogg_r]

I remembered seeing a Discord post about this, so I browsed my photos and found this:

From what I can tell, it would seem as if that’s your problem. LMK if this works (I have yet to test it)!

[crashedthe911 (saint)]

I made a post about this a few months ago. It’s just a general glitch. Roblox Studio Union Glitch..?

[loertis (cooper)]

Try copying everything and pasting it into a new world, it worked for me.

Edit: And you don’t have to make a model.

[PeZsmistic]

This issue seems to have gotten much worse over the last few months.
#help-and-feedback:building-support is currently full of users with “invisible unions”, and new cases keep appearing.

Here’s a related topic that I’ve left a reply to that may apply to this case as well.

@PeZsmistic

Saving the unions from your example files to XML and comparing them shows that the union asset is completely omitted from the saved file.

Replacing the contents of this field with the working AssetID and saving the XML file will completely fix the problem, but developers don’t have easy access to CSG assets uploaded for them.

SolidModel - Roblox

Somehow presumably the AssetID isn’t being serialized with the instance, or if changes were made to the union it’s failing to upload the CSG asset and blanking/deleting the AssetID associated with the instance.

You may also want to refer to this as well for help with recovering your unions if it happens to you.

How to recover invisible / corrupt unions

Introduction This tutorial will walk you through finding and recovering your unions if they get lost / corrupted / turn invisible. This method relies on trial-and-error, and works best if tried immediately after you’ve lost a union. Background Information When a union is created but before it or its place is saved, it contains child data - information about what it’s made of, stored directly in the place. When the union is saved to Roblox, a new SolidModel asset is created. The union instanc…

[PeZsmistic]

Managed to catch a log file from a Studio session where one of the unions I made experienced this issue.
I don’t think it’s likely to contain useful information, but I figured I should share it anyway since this is difficult to reproduce.

Here are the log files from a session where 1/3 unions died. The first time I saved this file was after I created the union that is now broken. I did not close Studio until all three unions were created and I had saved several times.

SessionWhereUnionBroke.txt (11.9 KB)
SessionAfterLoadingBrokenUnionFile.txt (9.7 KB)
UnionShadows.rbxl (20.4 KB)

[kenami]

Following a issue that was mentionned last year, as the post says, Using :SubtractAsync() can lead to the Union to still “exist”, except it is fully transparent while still having Transparency set to 0, and returns no error or any kind of feedback when this abnormal situation happens.

Example 1 : Union is here, the shape is correct (thanks to the texture we can see it being accurate), However, the Transparency is 0 and is still invisible, cannot be changed !

The bug doesn’t seems to appear AT ALL in Studio (used to appear very rarely a month ago, i cannot replicate it on Studio anymore) analysing over 300 :SubtractAsync()

Image : Many vents taken from the Map generator in studio “Play Solo” or “Run”, cannot encounter the issue even if map is extended x4.

It might be a minor mistake in the engine, because it turns out the Union “Collisions” are still present, i can enter the vent or the wall surface have the collisions works just fine.

Hard to estimate the % probability of the bug to appear, considering there was some situation where i could see it Transparent, but the other player didn’t, or vice-versa

Today i had another test where “both” users could see it transparent.

I’d say it have a 5% chance to occur.

It seems to be a light detail, but i firmly believe that, for a game, especially to set up a horror atmosphere, ruins heavily the immersion, i might be unable to do contents that are supposed to be hidden/discovered.

---

Game : Evasion Prototype - Roblox
(Access : Friends only) - request if cannot access (or need the map gen code source)
i can make mp4/gif upon request.

Laptop Specs

• Intel Core i7-7700HQ (Quad-Core 2.8 GHz / 3.8 GHz Turbo - Cache 6 Mo)
• Chipset Mobile Intel HM175 Express
• Frequency Memory DDR4 2400 MHz
• Graphic Card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050
• RAM 16 GB

[DOGS_THEYRESOCUTE]

I also have this bug in my game. My game generates unions at run time, and this bug happens pretty much every time I generate the parts of my game - which consists of several unions. The way I’m having to combat it is put textures on the sides of the bricks, so they look like they aren’t invisible. Not ideal.

Here is a unanswered thread from June also discussing the problem more specifically:

New union sometimes doest not load in game after using SubtractAsync() function

Sometimes in-game the new union that is supposed to be formed after using the aforementioned function goes completely transparent. Although the new union is there and the transparency is 0, it is as if the new union is not loading. Is there anyway to ensure that new unions created always loads. Also, this function is wrapped in a pcall() as prescribed by roblox.

in the end i just ended up saving the generated parts, and creating maps out of the already made unions

and hello boxing game friend

[Suuzv (Legoshi)]

This happened to be a lot but if fixes itself sometimes when i press undo then redo.

[ProvenData (John)]

This issue still doesn’t seem to have fixed. This error didn’t happen to me till I left studio and went back on now as you can see the union is transparent.

What it’s supposed to look like:

What it looks like:

I’ve tried to figure out how I can revert this bug I tried turning it negative then undo it, export it as an OBJ and rejoin studio. None of these have worked. The wooden plants have disappeared please ignore the change in metal and door handles on the second one the photo is before the update to the door.

[AsyncFunctions (Zach)]

Has also happened to me. Only happens to game that were saved to my computer though. On top of that, some unions (I believe if they were from the save before) will load, but the most recent ones do not. It’s a pain because it is not only glitching in studio; It also glitches like that in the actual game. I can still walk on it, and select it, but it is invisible. Hopefully this gets patched soon, as I use unions for very small details.

[MiniCong]

I’ve recently attempted to make something using CSGv1. Saved regularly to Roblox and come in the next day to see it has disappeared. And I’ve attempted remaking them. Then uploading them to roblox as an object but most cases turning it invisible. Is there a simple fix to this?

[RUPPYI (Rup)]

This is really annoying, I think Roblox should focus more on this problem. A lot of player’s are losing hours of work due to a bug in their self made studio.

[LuaBearyGood]

This bug is causing me a lot of issues, especially with live CSG and is currently stopping me from making a really cool system, if Roblox were able to resolve this issue it would open so many doors to more advanced games on Roblox.

[Caliber_j (Calvin)]

This issue is causing me a lot of problems too I recently made a boat model for a game im working on I published the game to roblox as I had to get off my pc for the night and in the morning the unions where invisible. Also, messing with the collisionfedelity crashes my studio ( The union issue also happened to every union I had in my game )

[Deemsx]

I have also experienced this issue. Even when saved as a model it is not able to separate the union - it just vanishes, so you’re stuck with a union you have to redo:

[Glaring]

This happens to me all the time, and drives me insane. I like working with unions, but the frequency with which they get corrupted makes them basically unusable.

My current workflow is: create union in Roblox, export it as .obj immediately so I don’t lose it, use Blender to bring the mesh back into Roblox so that I can turn it into a meshpart. This is a pretty quick and easy as long as the union isn’t so complicated that it requires additional work in Blender.

[ittrgrey (Ittr)]

That isn’t a solution - separating it just destroys the instance entirely.

[rogeriodec_games]

In my case, as I reported below, I need to use SubtractAsync, I need to create walls via Server Script, since the windows must be positioned in a flexible way, depending on the wall size.

So what now?
Do I have to remove this feature from my game?
Or how long should I wait until this bug is fixed?

Sometimes a material is not being shown in part

I don’t know why, but sometimes, when I start the game, although a part is correctly created, it’s appearing as completely transparent, like this wall: [image] However, its properties are ok: [image] If I stop the game and run it again, the part is correctly shown: [image] The Output Window shows no errors… Is there a way to avoid this?

[Hexcede]

@kenami
@ProvenData
@ittrgrey
@Deemsx
@PeZsmistic
This is due to ChildData missing from the union. PhysicsData remains afaik, but, when ChildData goes missing the Union will be separated into nothing (there is no instances stored for it to separate into), and will appear “invisible” despite having collision. I think additionally MeshData is lost? I don’t remember if MeshData is or isn’t lost… (These are all internal properties of PartOperation & PartOperationAsset instances, the latter being the instances stored in the Roblox cache for downloaded union content)

The reason that copy and pasting sometimes works is because the union can still have an asset ID with it on the web which will have old content. If your restart studio and save the game though, I’m fairly sure this ID gets overwritten because it gets uploaded as a new asset.

If you guys can provide me rbxl and rbxlx copies of effected Unions, I can possibly look into a way to recover or repair them hopefully. The more the better, but, it may not be possible as the data may just be gone entirely, we’ll see I suppose.

Also, if you have unions go missing in your place and its published, go into Game Settings > Places > (Sub menu) > Version History, you should be able to find old versions of your Unions still in tact there.

[PeZsmistic]

I’ve already looked into XML model files and it always manifests as a missing solidmodel asset ID. Just a null field. Doing anything useful with the compressed file format seems unlikely.

The union seems to get uploaded and the child data seems to get replaced with the uploaded asset whenever the place or model is saved in studio, which happens also on autosave, so recovering unions in other ways seems extremely unlikely and unreliable. The act of trying to save out the union will actually destroy it.

You can try this file if you want to test your theories, but I don’t think you’ll get much further. I have a tutorial up on how to recover your old unions that seems to do the job for most people who have lost significant work.

Unions disappearing / turning invisible after creation

Managed to catch a log file from a Studio session where one of the unions I made experienced this issue. I don’t think it’s likely to contain useful information, but I figured I should share it anyway since this is difficult to reproduce. Here are the log files from a session where 1/3 unions died. The first time I saved this file was after I created the union that is now broken. I did not close Studio until all three unions were created and I had saved several times. SessionWhereUnionBroke.t…