Can't get Ray Traced Distance Field Soft Shadows to work

Development Rendering
1

Hey everyone,

It’s probably a very simple oversight on my part, but I just can’t get Distance Field Soft Shadows to work. “Generate Mesh Distance Fields” is turned on in the project settings and appears to be working when I visualize the distance fields. The directional light is set to movable, “RayTraced DistanceField Shadows” is turned on and Cascaded Shadow Maps are turned off. Yet no shadows! If there are any additional steps required to set it up, they seem to be missing from the documentation or I just can’t find them.

I know it can be hard to pinpoint these problems without looking into them directly, so I attached a sample project (UE4.9) and hope that someone can take a quick look at it. I’ve been trying to use these shadows since they were added in 4.5 but could never figure them out…

http://s000.tinyupload.com/download.php?file_id=05045757725809920734&t=0504575772580992073489960

2

Cascaded shadows maps should still be used with RTDFSS for close range. RTDFSS are only used for far distance i believe

3

I just turned cascaded shadows off for preview purposes. When there are no shadows at all, regardless of the objects distance, it’s easy to tell that distance field shadows are clearly not working.

4

Do you maybe use Radeon R9 200 series Gpu?
There is a known problem with distance field shadows and R9 gpu.Distance field shadows doesn’t work for me either.

5

Oh man, that’s a bummer. I indeed have a card of the Radeon R9 200 series.
I guess I’ll have to invest into some new hardware sooner or later…

Thanks for the information in any case!

6

This is from another thread.

7

I see, so there’s still hope I suppose. Fingers crossed it gets fixed soon!