Hi, I’m using the mesh distances fields on in my settings. And its pretty working, but like the images below, when I decrease the Dynamic Shadow Distance, the nearest shadows are good, but Im creating a topdown game, so I didnt need a distant shadow, I only need a dynamic shadow for day cycle.
But I’m not figuring how is the settings I need to change to realize that.
The “GOOD” appears to be almost no shadow. Is that what you’re trying to get?
I’m talking about quality of Dynamic Distance, for first person it works great, but in my case not. Forget the intensity of shadow now.
Try changing Distribution Exponent to lower, say 1 or lower. Shadow Resolution and Shadow Bias help too, in the directional light. What are scalability settings of the project?
Yes, already tried… Scalabity is Epic. Look If you already saw this lesson https://learn.unrealengine.com/cours…dft0ylx&LPId=0 He explain how dynamic lights work. But I cant figure whats the distance that engine start to make changes in resolution the "near"or “far” distance. Looks like we cannot change this range.
Hi, from your first image my first guess would be that you don’t like the dark shadows =)
Since that is not your issue my second guess would be you don’t like the quality of the mesh distance field shadows (the border between “good” and “bad” is where you switch between cascaded shadow maps and mesh distance field shadows).
Since in the first image you specified that you only want cascaded shadow maps up to 20 meters from the player and mesh distance field shadows from that 20 meter distance up to 60 meters that is what you get.
In your second image you set the cascaded shadow maps to up to 30 meters from the player. Of course this will reduce the quality of your cascaded shadow maps since you only have a certain number of cascades and now you stretch them up to 30 meters instead of up to 20 meters. To counter this you can try what @presto423 said, so try changing the settings of the cascaded shadow maps, or if that does not help maybe watch the Lighting Essential Concepts and Effects course on the learning tab to get a better feeling for lightning, and/or better explain what your problem is and what you want to achieve.
I have difficulty with the same exact thing, pretty much. Determining where resolution of shadows is going to be the best, nearer or farther or middle of the dynamic shadow distance / CSM, and then making sure the shadow are sharp from up close to farther away. It’s why it’s necessary sometimes to modify the CSM settings, and directional light settings (Shadow Bias, Slope Bias, Shadow Resolution, and a few others if those apply). It’s not easy, and it really should be easier seeing as the majority of other rendered aspects of the scene are higher quality and don’t seem to require as much tweaking to get correct. One feature to try is “Dynamic Inset Shadow” on the meshes. However, it has a problem, at least in my project, where certain settings no longer affect the shadows and light leaking between walls / ceiling / floor or ground. I don’t know why it occurs, and I’ve tried some things to correct it, but didn’t work. There’s probably something I’m missing, or an overlooked setting or something to get it working, but Dynamic Inset Shadow is far better resolution for shadows in dynamic lighting.
The “bad” shadows in the top image are distance field shadows. I’m not sure why you enabled them but if you don’t want them… just turn them off…
Not sure what the difference you’re seeing between “good” and “medium” is, but if you just want sharper shadows you should turn up the Shadow Sharpen Filter. If your issue is with the resolution then you can try adjusting the Distribution Exponent.
