Can't get shadows sharp

Development Rendering
1

Imgur

Sorry for the imgur link I can’t upload here for some reason

Anyway I have tried everything.

In this picture:

My Lightmap resolution is 512 for each item (and I’ve tried very low numbers, down to 4, which makes it look better, but because the shadows disappear)

Lightmass indirect quality at 4

Lightmass indrect scale at 0.5

UV unwrapped with no overlapping bits and even top surfaces are resized to be larger than underside

My only wonder if it’s to do with smoothing. Or the lack of it to be more correct. UE4 complains about “no smoothing groups” but I do that on purpose to get that low-poly look

2

Is this an inherent issue with self-shadowing?

I am now playing with the bias on the lightsource itself, and ignoring lightmass for now

3

I’ve had some success with lightmaps resolutions set to 4096.

Shame it took like an hour to build 3 shapes

4

For a Static directional light, the size of the penumbras is controlled by LightSourceAngle under LightmassSettings. For a Stationary directional light, it’s controlled by DistanceFieldPenumbraSize in the Project settings -> Renderer Settings. Once you have enough resolution (use lightmap density viewmode to confirm), raising it further will not make the shadows sharper, it will just increase build times.

5

Thanks for that! I will look into it. :slight_smile: