Cast Modulated Shadows Grayed Out

I was following the unreal documentation for Mobile Lighting, specifically with Dynamic Cascaded Shadow Maps. Before I was using Modulated Shadowing, but now it is blurred out. I disabled Dynamic Cascaded Shadow Maps and reenabled it but still no change

Hey Zach,

I’m not able to see this happening on my end in any reproducible way. You didn’t mention this in your post but the tags you used mention the Mobile Preview. I the default mobile preview and still did not see this issue.

I have a few questions for you:

  • Since you mention Mobile Preview Discrepancies, this would seem to imply that you see it not grayed out when not in mobile preview, right?
  • Is this only happening in this project in this level, or can you create a new level and it work as intended?
  • If not in this particular project, do it work correctly for you in other projects?
  • Is it safe to assume you’re working on a Windows machine, or another OS?
  • If you have any additional steps to reproduce this can you post them here in detail?

Thank you!

Tim

Thank you for responding, I will answer them in order.

  • I created my project with mobile mode checked on, starter content and high quality checked off.
  • it works correctly in other levels.
  • It works correctly in other projects set to mobile
  • Windows
  • basically I was following the mobile lightening documentation, dont really know what I was specifically doing but I was testing out different lighten for a mobile game.

I dont believe this is a problem anymore since I found cascaded dynamic shadows works well. I am having one problem and that is the shadows are pure black? Also Im wondering if there are an

y specific causes to graying out Cast Modulated Shadows?

Unfortunately, I’m not able to reproduce it so it’s either a fluke or there is a very specific way to get it to cause this issue that just isn’t known.

As for the shadows casting black, if you’re using a dynamic only light this will happen because there is no dynamic bounce light or Global Illumination. If you use a Stationary or static light you get the bounce light from static lighting, or you can simply add a Sky Light actor to soften the shadowing. Modulated Shadowing being disabled will not have an effect on this. Modulated shadowing allows you to set a color for the shadow which can be softer than the black that is from dynamic direct lighting.

I had the “Cast Modulated Shadow” box become greyed out spontaneously as well. I had checked it a short while before, then unchecked it, and did some testing the dynamic lighting. When I went to check the “Cast Modulated Shadows” again, it was grayed out.

I got around this by creating another directional light. With the new light I had just created, I could check the “Cast Modulated Shadows” box as it was not greyed out.

thanks, never thought of that such a simple fix

I have the same problem in UE 4.15 … I was using Cast Modulated Shadows on the stationary directional light in my mobile project. I turned on Cascaded Shadow Maps by setting Dynamic Shadow Distance StationaryLight to 2000 with 1 cascade and no inset for moveable objects.

Now I can not turn it off. If I set the Distance back to zero, The Cascaded Shadow Map Options grey out. But ‘Cast Modulated Shadows’ is also greyed out and I can not interact with it.

These simple repro steps work for me in 4.16:

  1. Add a directional light
  2. Set ‘Dynamic Shadow Distance Stationary Light’ to a non-zero value
  3. Check ‘Inset Shadows For Movable Objects’
  4. Reset ‘Dynamic Shadow Distance Stationary Light’ to the default (0)
  5. Now ‘Cast Modulated Shadows’ is grayed out.

Simple workaround: temporarily set ‘Dynamic Shadow Distance Stationary Light’ to a non-zero value, reset offending customizations, then reset shadow distance back.

I have the same issue. The proposed workaround seems to work, although I’m able to turn on/off the Cast Modulated Shadows but I see no difference in the shadow.

Pasta007 fix works. Also Carrion Rabbit’s fix also works for me so I am marking this as resolved