heavy problem with the exposure of movable objects !

Development Rendering
1

Hi to all

I want to make a little archviz scene with a pinetree on the outside.
The tree is moving in the wind and i want to have some soft moving shadows on the ground.

The problem here is when i set the tree to movable and bake it the tree became much lighter.

Lightmass importance volume is set and i had tried to figure out wich light is the culprit.

static lightning scale 0.15
volume light sample placement 0.8
UE 4.9 Windows GTX980

a78acad688d980359f2953af94a5e79fdd15b015.jpeg skylight only
a12028cad6cb19733a017c5d73d2644129394707.jpeg directional only

any workarounds ?

2

Trees usually need indirect light cache quality to be set to volume.

3

You could use a movable (invisible) spot light just on top of the tree with low intensity just so it cast a little soft shadow on the ground. I think Koola did this in the lightroom demo scene. With the two sided foliage mode you can get good results and see the lights coming through the leaves.

4

@ jenny set it to volume and it look like before.

@ yeah movable shadow from a static object ! Thats what i was looking for.

The first Unreal Engine came out 1998, thats 18 years of development and they didnt get this to work …really ? :smiley:

How Epic solve this problem ?

5

Also, make sure that your directional light is set to Stationary

6

@ darthviper it is set as directional.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Nb6CKB6ltDdTNGRHRUb2JSWGc/view?usp=sharing here is the test scene. Can anybody take a look ?

7

Directional is the type of light, the light can then be set to Static (static shadows, no animation), Stationary (static shadows, but can animate intensity/color and casts dynamic shadows for dynamic objects), or Movable(only casts dynamic shadows, light can be animated in every way)

8

sorry was a typo i wanted to write stationary :slight_smile:

9

Ok i found a “solution” …

I made 2 Trees with different settings.

The first one is Invisible but cast a moving shadow and the second one i visible but has only its indirect shadow.

Voila correct exposure of the tree with moving shadows. :slight_smile:

10

I think you just should use dynamic shadows for given range. These override static shadows and then softly blends to static ones after range.
“Dynamic Shadow Distance StationaryLight” Then you don’t do anything special and it just work.