Unreal refraction material on Nintendo Switch

Hi! I’m looking for a solution, I’m working on Unreal for a Nintendo Switch build but the refraction is not working on Nintendo Switch, so would you know a way to solve that or to fake it ?

Hey a while back I worked on a game that was on Switch in addition to other platforms. I’m not sure if this was a default in Unreal, or a setting that our programmers specified, but the Switch used the Low scalability setting, which disabled refraction. This may or may not be your problem, but figured I’d mention it in case it helps.

1 Like

Did you try all the differen Refraction methods? None of them work?

You could try sampling scene texture / scene color in your translucent material, then distort the UVs.
As a workaround.

2 Likes

It’s common for games based on vulkan devices. I am not pretty sure how the config looks for the nintendo switch - I haven’t worked with that device yet. But try to find to fake refraction for the mobile games. That should fix the issue. There’s always some tricks for that.

1 Like

Hi Stingart!

As NickR mentioned, UE uses the mobile renderer for lower end platforms.
To re-enable refraction, you have to enable “Mobile HDR”. This option can be found in the mobile rendering options under “Project Settings > Rendering”. This will also allow you to fully utilize post-processing. But beware of the performance impact! Do some benchmarks and consult with Technical Artist and Engineering :sweat_smile:

As an alternative solution: you can use a baked cubemap texture to fake refraction. Which might be enough depending on the game. There should be enough tutorials and screenshots of how to do this if you google for it :slight_smile:

1 Like

Thank you for all your answers! It helps me a lot, I already tried to distort the UVs of my scene but the material didn’t work on Switch again (that surprised me btw), maybe I did something wrong, I’ll check that.

Thanks again guys !

Hmmm weird. Simple distortion is not supported? Could you send us a screen from the material?