Hi ,I’m new to the unreal engine and try very simple scenarios in order to learn it.
In the follow scenario contains static mesh cube over a larger one and a point light I get annoying shadow artifacts as shown in the snapshot.
The scenarios is made by:
- A point light at world location (0,0,350)
- A floor made from a static mesh cube at location (0,0,0) and with scaling of (50,50,1). Its lightmap resolution was increased to 1024 (the shadow is totally incorrect if the lightmap resolution is not increased)
- A static mesh cube “sits” on the floor - located at (-300,-300,100)
Is there recommended tutorial explaining how to deal with all these artifacts ?
Thanks
I think you’ll find it’s the scaling of the large cube giving most of the problems. Try reducing it a lot. Large meshes need very large lightmaps.
Also, unless you really have to, don’t use static lighting 
Thanks! Indeed, I follow your suggestion to reduce the floor object and the results now much much better.
If I understand correctly, practically, if I need for a large floor, I have to split it in order to have a small mesh where I wish the shadow to fall on.
I will check also with non static lighting after I will learn this subject. When should I prefer static lighting over other dynamic one?
Unfortunately, you also get problem with joining meshes and static shadows, so you might end up with a seam. It is possible to avoid by carefully tuning the lightmass settings.
Another way, is to make the ground moveable, because it then gets dynamic lighting. And yes, that’s the same as turning on dynamic lighting
Very easy to do, much easier than static lighting, just change the directional light ( or point light ) to moveable. That’s it.
Upsides of static lighting are really good shadows ( but you have to know what you’re doing ) and more performance. Downsides of static lighting are memory used by lightmaps and sitting staring off to infinity waiting for the light to build.
Movable lights are the opposite really. Zero setup time, but can impact performance depending on what you’re doing.
In a nutshell, don’t use static unless you really have to. Use cases include artwork, archviz and phones.
I tried also with dynamic lighting by changing the point light object to be movable. Indeed, the shadow now has no ripples edges as shown, but there is an artifact - the shadow doesn’t begin with the cube corner as needed. What is the way to fix this artifact within the dynamic lighting method ?
