Hello
I am poking around on making a big city scene and I found a problem with shadows. The Far Shadow option really helps with big meshes and long distances, but when you get close to these meshes there is the problem you see in the picture. The blending point between Far Shadow and Closer Shadow doesn’t overlap so you get a gap between them.
Is there a way to reduce Far Shadow distance fall off so they overlap Close Shadows?
HI tsuzumi,
I’m not seeing the same on my end. I’ve made a simple mesh and enabled Far Shadow for that mesh. I see the nice soft blend between the far and close cascaded shadows.
In this gif, you can see the softer edged shadow towards the center. That’s the far shadow blending with the near cascades.
My directional light is set to Movable, with Far Shadow Cascade Count set to 1. Everything else is left at defaults for the direcitonal light.
Let me know what you’re settings are for the Directional light and any additional details about your scene that may help me offer some feedback. Also, check and make sure your Engine Scalability Settings are set to EPIC, although these shouldn’t produce a gap between the cascades.
i am not home right now. will check as soon i am.
though, how high is your test mesh? if that can matter. my is 2300 meter, or maybe it was more.
I tried in a new project with all default settings except the needed for the test. Only difference I can think of is that I have turned off Static lights and baking.
Right. So I asked others to try this and they ge the same.
To reproduce this:
Add one Directional Light, enable Far Distance Shadows with at least one Cascade and Movable.
Make a SM that is at least a few hundred meters high, from BSP works. Enable Far Distance Shadows. Duplicate the SM and make sure that one casts shadow on the other one.
Can you post your DxDiag here? I’m still not seeing the same issue on my end. I took the template floor mesh from the default level and scaled this to be 400 times longer and two walls using the same asset stretched upwards 100 times, which is more than the 200 meters you had suggested. In all, the far shadows still blended correctly from what I can see with an asset that stretches over 4000 meters.
Typically when building assets that will be used in a larger world, you would not want to have objects that scaled this large as there can sometimes be issues with it and how other object interact. I don’t think this necessarily addresses the gap you’re seeing vs what I’m seeing when scaling, but perhaps your DxDiag with the system specs can and I can see if I can reproduce using a similar system or setup.
Well. My mesh isn’t scaled but made that big with a 3D app.
DxDiag
Right. So I reinstalled everything UE related, launcher and engine, removing users file and what not.
And I still get the same effect on very big objects.Try this one
So, I am not sure this have to do with Far Shadow, but maybe with Cascade over all, or maybe just close Cascades.
I’m attaching a project I made with cameras aimed that should show the problems.
In my console Variables I these, only:
Now, If I change the Close Shadow Cascade to 1, this problem does not occur. Changing Far Shadow Cascade doesn’t seems to affect it at all.
