Why are my prefab and model previews not showing?

Unity Engine
1

My prefabs and models are showing up with a black preview. Same with the animation preview window.

I imported some assets into my project, and those render correctly. If I duplicate one of those prefabs, the duplicated instance will instantly have a black preview. I didn’t even modify the duplicate.

Has anybody seen this? How can I fix it?

Thanks!

2

This is now happening on every prefab in my project. It’s becoming pretty difficult to navigate my project as a result. Any input is appreciated.

3

I made some progress. I have a custom LWRP configuration in place. When that is in use, all my asset previews are black. When I switch back to the standard LWRP configuration and reimport, they work.

That’s unfortunate, and I’ll have to find some other workaround or wait for this bug to be fixed.

4

Probably your materials and shaders. More info for example here:
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/02/21/the-lightweight-render-pipeline-optimizing-real-time-performance/

5

I’m having this problem too with 2019.3.5f1 on MacOS. When I remove the URP Asset from the pipeline settings all the preview images work after I reimport them but then they’re all pink because I’m using URP Shaders…
With the URP Asset enabled in the settings all the preview images are just black…

6

Same on 2019.3.4f1 on Windows 10

EDIT: I suggest moving this thread to the URP forum as this is most probably a bug in URP.

Another edit: someone already reported this issue: Unity Issue Tracker - [URP] Prefab preview is blank when a Custom Forward Renderer Data and Default Layer Mask is Mixed are used

Issue ID 1204376

1 Like
7

Something that it worked for me:

Select all the prefabs that you see black. Disable the Mesh Renderer from the inspector to all of them, and enable it again. That will force Unitys project file manager to refresh the preview of the prefab mesh.

3 Likes
8

This was happening to me on Unity 2021.1.14f1, I didn’t have any Mesh Renderer on my prefabs, but selecting them all and disabling-enabling a BoxCollider2D worked as well. Probably changing any value will force them to refresh. Now they show correctly again.

9

Unity doesn’t seem to refresh prefab preview if you change actual mesh on Mesh Renderer as that’s what I was doing. Simply disabled/enable of entire object with a Mesh sorted it (although had to refresh folder a few times)

10

This actual issues causing a collider if you disable collider of your model or prefab it gonna appear after you set collider enabled it gonna disappear once again so there’s no need to disable mesh or prefab itself just disable colliders on it.

P.S. to fix it you actually need to replace all colliders on your prefabs. That’s something to do with the size of the collider