My viewport displays awful blurry shadows and no reflection, even if I open the default level (see attached 1). And when I drop a new static mesh, it doesn’t display any preview shadow at all (see attached 2).
I checked on a video tutorial and as you can see in this default level, shadows and reflections look way better (attached 3) …
The same problem occurs when i build the lighting : lightmap uvs are clean, but shadows are totally wrong, and no reflection
It appears there is two things going on here that you should be aware of.
Let’s look at the shadow issue you’ve mentioned. Go to Quick Settings in the tool bar > Drop down and select “Engine Scalability Settings” and see what setting is listed here.
If it’s on low it will look like you’re scene. I’ve replicated this on my end to be sure. When it’s on “Low” dynamic shadows (the preview shadow before baking static lights) will be disabled. When you hit “Build” it will bake the static lighting, however, if you need better shadows you will need to up the lightmap resolution for the floor since this is where the shadows of the chair and table are being baked.
In the video image you posted from our tutorial series you need to be aware that some things have changed. This effect is still available it’s just been toned down in later versions to not be the default setting.
For the reflections you’ll need to place a post process volume in the scene and encompass your playable area > Screen Space Reflections > Enabled “Quality” and move it to a value above 50 to see SSR in action. You will also need to adjust your Engine Scalability settings to be a higher.
Preview shadows are clean, and when I drop a new static mesh, its own shadow is enabled. Great !
And the baked shadows are also very clean after building light (it seems at last quite normal for a 2k lightmap).
However, I still have no reflexion. I might have missed something in your explaination…but this time, i’ll figure it out by myself ^^
When 4.3 was released (the video you mention is from 4.0 I think) the reflection quality default setting was lowered to help performance on mid to lower end systems.
To raise the quality of the reflections back to what the video settings was you’ll need to add a post process volume to your scene (if you’re still in the starter map you can just use the Global Post Process that’s in the scene outliner). Select this and use the details panel. Locate the tab named “Screen Space Reflections” and put a check box by Quality. Change the value to something like 60 and you’ll be back to the level of the settings in the video.
I hope that explains it a little better. If not, let me know.
