We all know that UE4 is perfectly capable to achieve photorealistic results when it comes to baking lighting and shadows, as shown particularly well in the archiviz threads in the WIP subforum.
But what happens when you introduce dynamic objects such as characters in a scene mostly lit by ambient/indirect lighting?
http://i.minus.com/i3lvglRbpMrWT.png
They receive light from the environment but they aren’t properly grounded because they lack the ability to cast shadows and there’s only so much you can do with SSAO.
Enter realtime area shadows:
http://i.minus.com/it31sQ3D1ukSj.png
Very soft directional shadows that ground the characters and add believability to the world.
So far only two games (as far as I know) feature this technology, The Last of Us (shown above) and The Tomorrow Children (not yet released):
Both of these games use as a basis a technique that’s been available for almost a decade, shown here:
Here’s the paper on the technique: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/?id=69337
The Last of Us implementation: http://miciwan.com/SIGGRAPH2013/Lighting%20Technology%20of%20The%20Last%20Of%20Us.pdf
The Tomorrow Children implementation: http://fumufumu.q-games.com/archives/2014_09.php#000934
Please Epic (or the community), make it happen.
