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HVOL vs SLW - Heterogeneous Volumes DO NOT z-sort properly with SingleLayerWater

Set TopicsSET TOPICSep 8, 2026Original source

HVOL vs SLW - Heterogeneous Volumes DO NOT z-sort properly with SingleLayerWater

  • ninja supports four volume types (SVOL, HVOL, FVOL, CVOL), read more HERE

  • one of these, is heterogeneous volume (HVOL), a native Unreal Engine volume type

  • an inherent flaw of HVOL (an Unrel Engine bug): sorting is not resolved with SingleLayerWater (SLW) shader - HVOL is always drawn in front of SLW, and this can not be changed (in my experience, under UE 5.3 - UE 5.6 --- but I assume this must be the case with UE 5.8 too.)

  • workaround-1: use non SLW for water (eg.: translucent material)

  • workaround-2: use other volumetic domain, eg.: SVOL (ninja native volume type) ---wich sorts correctly with SLW, you can see this on LEVEL Water_Sparse_Sea_Quiet where the character’s foot-dust fx is made of SVOL, and you can walk into the SLW water

  • workaround-3: use non-volumetric camera facing smoke with simple translucent shader, which also sorts good with SWL. Smoke demonstrated on this level: VolumeDemo_FAKE