Troubles installing Visual Effects Graph

I've been attempting to get Visual Effects Graph installed and working but am running into several problems.

The latest appears to be some form of corruption that I'm unsure how to resolve; a complete uninstall and reinstall with a blank project did not fix the issue.

It appears as though Visual Effects Graph is looking for files in the wrong folder location: base F: rather than here, F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview

Without knowing where to make the necessary changes, I'm unsure of how to resolve the problem.

Here's the error message that comes up:

Exception while compiling expression graph: System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path "f:\templates\vfxparticlequad.template".
at System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, System.IO.FileMode mode, System.IO.FileAccess access, System.IO.FileShare share, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.Boolean anonymous, System.IO.FileOptions options) [0x00164] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, System.IO.FileMode mode, System.IO.FileAccess access, System.IO.FileShare share, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.IO.FileOptions options, System.String msgPath, System.Boolean bFromProxy, System.Boolean useLongPath, System.Boolean checkHost) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.FileStream..ctor(string,System.IO.FileMode,System.IO.FileAccess,System.IO.FileShare,int,System.IO.FileOptions,string,bool,bool,bool)
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path, System.Text.Encoding encoding, System.Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.Boolean checkHost) [0x00067] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path, System.Text.Encoding encoding, System.Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks, System.Int32 bufferSize) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path, System.Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks) [0x0000d] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(string)
at System.IO.File.ReadAllText (System.String path) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCodeGenerator.GetFlattenedTemplateContent (System.String path, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] includes, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[T] defines) [0x0008d] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXCodeGenerator.cs:275
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCodeGenerator.Build (UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContext context, System.String templatePath, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContextCompiledData contextData) [0x0000e] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXCodeGenerator.cs:355
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCodeGenerator.Build (UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContext context, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContextCompiledData contextData) [0x00012] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXCodeGenerator.cs:188
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGraphCompiledData.GenerateShaders (System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] outGeneratedCodeData, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXExpressionGraph graph, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[T] contexts, System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[TKey,TValue] contextToCompiledData, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode) [0x00067] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXGraphCompiledData.cs:457
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGraphCompiledData.Compile (UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode, System.Boolean forceShaderValidation) [0x00474] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXGraphCompiledData.cs:684 : at System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, System.IO.FileMode mode, System.IO.FileAccess access, System.IO.FileShare share, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.Boolean anonymous, System.IO.FileOptions options) [0x00164] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.FileStream..ctor (System.String path, System.IO.FileMode mode, System.IO.FileAccess access, System.IO.FileShare share, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.IO.FileOptions options, System.String msgPath, System.Boolean bFromProxy, System.Boolean useLongPath, System.Boolean checkHost) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.FileStream..ctor(string,System.IO.FileMode,System.IO.FileAccess,System.IO.FileShare,int,System.IO.FileOptions,string,bool,bool,bool)
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path, System.Text.Encoding encoding, System.Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks, System.Int32 bufferSize, System.Boolean checkHost) [0x00067] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path, System.Text.Encoding encoding, System.Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks, System.Int32 bufferSize) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path, System.Boolean detectEncodingFromByteOrderMarks) [0x0000d] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at System.IO.StreamReader..ctor (System.String path) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.StreamReader..ctor(string)
at System.IO.File.ReadAllText (System.String path) [0x00000] in <23c160f925be47d7a4fd083a3a62c920>:0
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCodeGenerator.GetFlattenedTemplateContent (System.String path, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] includes, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[T] defines) [0x0008d] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXCodeGenerator.cs:275
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCodeGenerator.Build (UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContext context, System.String templatePath, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContextCompiledData contextData) [0x0000e] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXCodeGenerator.cs:355
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCodeGenerator.Build (UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContext context, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXContextCompiledData contextData) [0x00012] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXCodeGenerator.cs:188
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGraphCompiledData.GenerateShaders (System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] outGeneratedCodeData, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXExpressionGraph graph, System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable`1[T] contexts, System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[TKey,TValue] contextToCompiledData, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode) [0x00067] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXGraphCompiledData.cs:457
at UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGraphCompiledData.Compile (UnityEditor.VFX.VFXCompilationMode compilationMode, System.Boolean forceShaderValidation) [0x00474] in F:\Unity Projects\Test Lightweight RP\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.visualeffectgraph@6.5.3-preview\Editor\Compiler\VFXGraphCompiledData.cs:684
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)​

 

Update...
I'm not sure what the cause or solution to the above problem is. But the workaround was reverting back to a previous version of Unity, HDRP, and Visual Effects Graph. Instead of using Unity 2019.3.0a2, I've reverted back to 2019.1.3f1. And HDRP and Visual Effects Graph versions 5.7.2 were used instead of 6.5.3.

While this still throws an error, it seems to auto-resolve. For the sake of completeness, here's the error:

Could not find VFXDefaultResources.asset, creating...
UnityEditor.EditorWindow:GetWindow()
VisualEffectAssetEditor:OnOpenVFX(Int32, Int32) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@5.13.0-preview/Editor/Inspector/VFXAssetEditor.cs:155)
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)​

 

Hey, this is an old thread but I ran into the same problem years later so I hope it reaches someone after me.

When Making a new VFX graph asset I would get a similar error as op starting with "Exception while compiling expression graph: System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path"

I believe this issue is caused by the length of the path address (found in this thread: [SOLVED] DirectoryNotFoundException with different packages - Unity Forum). It's worth a shot to try and shorten your folder hierarchy. It worked for me. Hope this helps!