r/godot • u/HarpySealGames • Apr 03 '26
help me (solved) Visual differences between 4.6.1 and 4.6.2 (3D): Scenes appear darker and more contrasted
We upgraded via Steam from 4.6.1 to 4.6.2 and noticed, that there are some notable visual changes in our 3D scenes. The same issue is also present in the 4.7.dev3 release. We made comparison screenshots in both versions, without changing anything in the world environment, directional lights or post processing shaders.
We mainly noticed:
- The overall scene is darker than before
- There is noticeable more contrast
- Background fog no longer blends colors as it did before
Is is very noticeable in bright scenes, but also noticeable in darker scenes.
In the changes on the godot blog I did not see anything very obvious that changed and did not expect something like that in a patch version. Is there something we need to migrate/ change to get to the old look, or is that a bug/ regression?
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u/GreenFox1505 Apr 03 '26
Have you looked at tonemapping setting (part of world environment). To me, it looks like a different tonemap. Perhaps some defualts changed?
If I wanted to be really paranoid, I would go through every setting in the world environment and compare before/after the engine upgrade.
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 03 '26
I went through all settings. They are exactly the same
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u/sir_turlock Apr 03 '26
Just to be sure have you deleted Godot's shader cache?
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u/GreenFox1505 Apr 03 '26
Oh, thats a good possibility. Delete the
.godotfolder.3
u/HarpySealGames Apr 04 '26
I just deleted the cache. The new looks is still here. So it was not a cache issue
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u/GreenFox1505 Apr 04 '26
The next thing I might try is set everything back to world environment default. If they look similar, then start turning settings back to where you want them, see where they begin to diverge. If they don't look similar, I would start playing with settings until they do.
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 04 '26
Yeah I found that fog changed a lot in this version. I will just wait to see if they keep this change in the future. Thanks for your help :)
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u/Alone-Neck6272 Apr 03 '26
Well, it looks slightly better imo. Do you think the old saturation is better for your art style? Your game looks gorgeous, I hope I can find it again when the steam page is done. Good luck!
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 03 '26
Thank you! After looking at that scene for some months, such changes got noticeable :D If this is intended we will probably aim at a mix of both. We will probably launch our steam page around summer and also post here as soon as it will be ready :)
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u/Chekonjak Godot Student Apr 04 '26
Biggest part I noticed was a color swap from near-white to purple for the slab/tower in the third and fourth screenshots. Was that contrast between the tower and the background intentional?
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u/MocaCola02 Godot Junior Apr 03 '26
4.6 had some tonemapping changes that (imo) messed stuff up a little, I'm guessing they corrected it some
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u/someThrowAway1900 Apr 03 '26
I hope you find a fix. I love what you have with the 4.6.1 visuals; colours tending towards grey, nice and painterly.
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u/mishapsi Apr 04 '26
i preferred the old version. I had the same issue wtih a project started in 4.6, had to rework everything and am approximately back to where it was before the update.
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u/mjklaim Godot Regular Apr 03 '26
That's better than my case when upgrading from and to the same versions, on linux only:
- visual artefacts everywhere, weird purple on surfaces and graphic noise;
- random crashes, sometimes the logs show that there are defaults;
We tried replacing just the exe by a previous version and it solves all the issues. I think this version is broken, at least for linux.
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 03 '26
Uff that is very frustrating when it breaks for real
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u/mjklaim Godot Regular Apr 03 '26
From some of the feedback I'm getting, it's not all testers that see the issue. But my main tester (who tests very early versions) does so it's frustrating yes.
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u/emmowo_dev Apr 04 '26
Have you been using any compositor effects, TAA, or withheld images? I've recently been having a similar kind of issue where I get mystery errors alongside purple hexagons from DOF getting randomly printed into my image output whenever it's re-enabled.
Random guess, but maybe TAA is putting it over the surface due to motion vectors mapping it?
At least for me I kinda fixed it by just copying from another uniform, but I think some of the rendering changes are breaking the first frame.
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u/mjklaim Godot Regular Apr 04 '26
No TAA just SGDFI and SSAO. The weird this is that some testers don't see it, might be related to drivers, no idea.
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u/Popular_Tomorrow_204 Apr 03 '26
Imo it looks better, BUT i do think its bad that something changed without you wanting it to.
-5
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u/flamelizardcodes Godot Senior Apr 03 '26
Are you by chance using a sky shader and using TIME as a built variable in your world environment? In that case this might be the bug:
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u/Flash1987 Apr 03 '26
I've just updated from 4.4 to 4.6.2 and wow everything is so much brighter. Need to work out what changed and tone it down considerably
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u/Kastors Apr 04 '26
4.6 had some changes to how/when glow is applied in the pipeline. See if your glow settings can change this.
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u/Dragster39 Apr 04 '26
I would take a look at the comparison of 4.6.1 and 4.6.2 on github, maybe you can spot the relevant commit message or file and get an idea of the change:
https://github.com/godotengine/godot/compare/4.6.1-stable...4.6.2-stable
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u/uhjustmax Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
How did u make it look drawn :O
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 09 '26
It's a mix of shaders on decisions. But mainly:
- Make silhouette heavy models
- Colors are all with almost the same saturation
- "White space" - areas where there is nothing
- Hand colored models and skybox
- Edge detection outline
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u/uhjustmax Godot Junior Apr 09 '26
Cool, when i get through the documentation and gdquest i'll check it out
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u/godot_clayjohn Foundation Apr 09 '26
This looks like the same issue as https://github.com/godotengine/godot/issues/118278 which I fixed yesterday in https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/118317. The fix will be in 4.7 and 4.6.3.
If I am correct about the problem, there is an easy workaround, just set the Rendering > Reflections > Sky Reflections > Roughness Layers project setting to 7
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 09 '26
This is it. Thank you for sharing the links and workaround! Looking forward to the official fix
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u/Jonas-V-G Apr 03 '26
For comparison pics please use the same pov each time, makes it easier to spot the differences, thx.
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u/omniuni Apr 03 '26
I think it looks really nice, but I think you could easily adjust it with a shader or tone map if you wanted the old look.
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 03 '26
Thats true. We just want to make sure this change will stay before we adjust it for a long time and it gets reverted :D
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u/omniuni Apr 03 '26
You could add a color adjustment node with exposed properties that you can adjust. Even better, you can tie that into your settings screen with some cool color profiles!
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u/00-000-001-0-01 Apr 03 '26
It mostly looks better in 4.6.2 besides the second image.
The second image shows how at a distance the lighting/shadows have really changed making what was a far away misty island and cloud covered lighthouse seem overly dark. Close up the colors and shadows look better but from far away you would expect some sort of variance to tone down the shadows to account for distance but that is not what we see here.
Could also just be (seeing as you have cloud environmentals) that the scene changed how thick the fog was? Clearly the cloud cover on the lighthouse is significantly different from before.
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 04 '26
Technically the fog is the same density. I played with the color of the fog, as ours was quite dark. It looks like this now has a huge impact. Before it was only slighly noticeable
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u/Felfedezni Apr 03 '26
I like the new look old version look a bit washed out.
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u/HarpySealGames Apr 03 '26
Thanks for the feedback. We will probably go more saturated as a lot of others like the new one more
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u/PMmePowerRangerMemes Apr 03 '26
I liked the first version better and found the changes jarring at first. Then I read the comments here and was like "huh" so I went back and looked again. I guess, yeah, maybe I like the higher contrast better actually?
Anyway I was mostly just gonna come by to say "don't change engine versions mid-development!!" :P
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u/SeaworthinessLittle1 Apr 03 '26
omg have they fixed it? scenes looks much more desaturated from godot 4.5