Jagged shadows / artifacts on simple objects

[Houourin]

Hello, Quite new here so I might be going over some elemental stuff… beg your pardon.

I’ve been doing some test on UE5 (preview) and run into this issue of the shadows not showing as nice as they should.

I was having trouble with a complex model so went to try with a basic scene.
I noticed that increasing a lot the polygon count fixes the “shadow” … is there another way? increasing poly count doesn’t sound like the optimal way at first glance.

Everything is setup to Cinematic. and tried also with the console tweaking bias, cascade etc… with not much of a change…

If you have any idea what I could try next I would appreciate as I’m a bit out of ideas.

[Houourin]

I found out that the scalability settings if lowered to medium make that shadow worst.
So I researched all the scalability settigns that change with the “shadow medium” and change them by hand one by one to force to make it worst… and see witch parameter is it… so I can crank it up… but non of them worked.

[ShadowQuality@Cine]
r.LightFunctionQuality=1
r.ShadowQuality=5
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=10
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=4096
r.Shadow.MaxCSMResolution=4096
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=1.0
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=1.0
r.Shadow.PreShadowResolutionFactor=1.0
r.DistanceFieldShadowing=1
r.DistanceFieldAO=1
r.AOQuality=2
r.VolumetricFog=1
r.VolumetricFog.GridPixelSize=4
r.VolumetricFog.GridSizeZ=128
r.VolumetricFog.HistoryMissSupersampleCount=16
r.LightMaxDrawDistanceScale=1
r.CapsuleShadows=1
r.Shadow.Virtual.MaxPhysicalPages=8192
r.Shadow.Virtual.ResolutionLodBiasDirectional=-1.5
r.Shadow.Virtual.ResolutionLodBiasLocal=0.0
r.Shadow.Virtual.SMRT.RayCountDirectional=16
r.Shadow.Virtual.SMRT.SamplesPerRayDirectional=8
r.Shadow.Virtual.SMRT.RayCountLocal=16
r.Shadow.Virtual.SMRT.SamplesPerRayLocal=8

[Houourin]

I guess it has to be something coming from Lumen, as in my tests this didn’t happen in 4.27

well if you want some nice shading closeup shots, right now we should be going back to 4.27

[Richard_Culver]

In Project Settings, do you have Virtual Shadow Maps enabled?

Engine/Rendering/

Try turning it off.

And in the light settings (if rec light )decrease the shadow resolution scale:

Also try playing with shadow bias on the light.

[Houourin]

Thank you!
Ill check that, seems that was some problem on the “preview version of UE5” as the exactly same scene on Release cersion didnt have that problem.
Anyways will check the options you mentioned.
Thank you!

[ChaosRule56911 (ChaosRule5691)]

Hey Houourin,

I found this video to be helpful in terms of figuring out what was going on with my shadows as I transitioned over to UE5.

Hope it helps.

Fixing the Ugly Shadow Issues in Unreal Engine 5

[Richard_Culver]

Also, if you are rendering, I find these things are only in the display but disappear when you render.

[MagicBeaver88]

Thanks a lot, your method solved my issues.