When setting the properties of a SurfaceAppearance, the SurfaceAppearance suddenly breaks and does not render anymore. You can still revert the property change to get the SurfaceAppearance to render properly again.
I am unsure of the exact cause, but I have been able to record two instances of this happening within a week. This issue seems to have been introduced somewhat recently (within the past couple of weeks). Restarting studio solves the problem, but that work-around is of course extremely annoying/tedious.
Below is an instance of me updating the AlphaMode which causes the texture to disappear.
And here is an instance of me updating the RoughnessMap on a different SurfaceAppreance, which also prevents the texture from being rendered.
Expected behavior
I expect the texture to not disappear after updating any of the SurfaceAppearance’s properties.
Thank you for reporting it! Do you have a place file and steps to reproduce the issue? It would help us a lot and significantly reduce the time required to investigate the issue.
Unfortunately I am unable to attach any reproduction steps as I have been unable to identify the exact cause of the issue - otherwise I would have mentioned it and attached those reproduction steps.
I can give some additional information though which might hopefully be relevant:
I am working in a Team Create instance.
The MeshPart instances in both videos were recently uploaded (within an hour of the issue occuring).
The texture being applied in the second video was already very old (months old), so it should not be related to the textures still having to go through moderation.
Both meshes from the MeshPart instance were uploaded by clicking on the ‘MeshId’ property instead of using the 3d importer.
If I recall correctly the textures on both meshes render fine if applied to the MeshPart’s ‘TextureID’ property. The problem seems to occur only when editing the SurfaceAppearance properties.
The issue doesn’t always happen. I tried uploading a mesh on a new file just now and the SurfaceAppearance on those worked totally fine.
As mentioned before, this seems to be a very recent issue. I have never before had this issue up until a few weeks ago.
As mentioned before, reopening Roblox Studio always fixes the problem, so I would guess the problem is either related to something in the upload process of the MeshPart, or something in the process of creating a SurfaceAppearance instance.
I will provide an update if I happen to stumble upon any solid reproduction steps.
Today I ran into a similar issue, but this time with a MaterialVariant. I believe the problem is tied to the same problem as I reported here initially. Yesterday I created a MaterialVariant for the DiamondPlate material. Here’s a picture I shared with friends yesterday.
Today however after I opened studio the texture was simply gone.
Nothing happens when I try to edit the properties of the MaterialVariant. Resetting the property does not make the texture suddenly appear. It doesn’t look like the image was moderated either because it appears as normal on the creator dashboard. (the color map is very vague and may look like pure white, but it isn’t)
Upon further investigation I believe that - for some reason - the mipmaps(?) of the normal map are still being rendered correctly. Here is a close-up of the surface and nearby pixels appear smooth whereas far-away pixels appear bumpier like expected.
On a Decal the textures appear 100% fine. (Again, the color map here is a bit overexposed so it may appear fully white)
Opening a new file and pasting the MaterialVariant in there works fine. Reopening the same file also works fine.
Something about loading / updating / manipulating textures seems completely broken recently. Again - I cannot consistently reproduce this issue as should be apparent from me reopening the file ‘fixing’ the problem.
I’m having similar issues, today I was able to add a ColorMap and a MetalnessMap but as soon as I got to NormalMap, the texture broke and this error message appeared in the output:
Normally I’d expect to see this on deleted assets but this happens immediately after adding a new texture.
I’m also working in team create, but yesterday I had this issue in a non-team create world.
Edit: This is happening pretty consistently now. Any image that has yet to pass moderation is throwing errors and not loading in studio. The previous functionality was that I, the uploader, could see images I uploaded before they passed moderation, so I could continue working uninterrupted. Others in team create would not see these images. Now I can’t see my own images until they have been approved and I often have to reupload the textures to fix the original ones because for some reason they remain broken even after approved (even if I restart studio sometimes). I’ve now changed my workflow to upload mesh textures before meshes, so they will be approved by the time I need to apply them to the meshes. This isn’t ideal as a lot of meshes come with the texture attached.
This issue still persists. I have attached a video with full reproduction steps. Switching AlphaMode on the SurfaceAppearance does nothing until the studio file is reopened. In fact, even after reopening the studio file the property is still broken as switching back from ‘Transparency’ to ‘Overlay’ does nothing on the second instance.
I assumed my issue was related to this issue which was fixed a month ago, but that fix seemingly does not cover my issue here. Just in case, @Lukoshkin and @tnavarts was that bug report fix supposed to cover my issue above as well, or is this a different problem? Because if they’re related, images still will not render in this situation until studio is reopened.
In the reproduction steps I posted just now (The YT video), I uploaded the image through the asset manager. The related place file was uploaded to my profile so the image ended up in my personal inventory.
For the image used in the very first video I’m like 99% sure it’s uploaded to the group tied to that experience that I am editing. I verified just now that the rendering issue is also present in that case (a SurfaceAppearance attached to a MeshPart with a ColorMap image that is uploaded to the game’s group inventory).
Here the image no longer renders after editing the properties
So the image fails to render for both group images and personal images.
-- Can confirm this is also happening with me, except for me it becomes literally impossible to get the image to render again without reuploading the image entirely whenever this happens. It will just happen in the middle of playing and then persists even once I end the playtest, close and reopen Studio, and anything else I try.
It appears that random SurfaceAppearance instances fail to load after re-opening the place with the affected model, even though all textures loaded properly after uploading the model.
Here’s the uploading process:
After re-opening the same place, the described issue occurs:
Fetching one of the URL’s content results in what seem to be the properties of a surface appearance in the XML format:
The ColorMap id from the previous image belongs to two SurfaceAppearances, and they both had failed to load:
I also tested this out with all plugins disabled (using the ‘-disableLoadUserPlugins’ flag), but nothing changed. It also happens with team create enabled. Pasting the model into a new place is the same as re-opening the original place.
What’s interesting is that this issue is only present in studio:
