(Not sure if bug) why are shadows blocky in 4.6 dynamic-lit-only?

Development Rendering
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1

Bit of a UE4 newbie here. The following steps result in unacceptably blocky shadows in 4.6 whereas in 4.5.1 they were smooth and beautiful IIRC:

  • start new project from 3rd-person starter template
  • in Project Settings / Rendering / Lighting, untick “Allow static lighting” checkbox
  • in World Settings / Lightmass, tick “Force no precomputed lighting” checkbox
  • in Build toolbar drop-down, set Lighting Quality to Production and click Build Lighting Only so that our “dynamic lighting only, no static lighting ever” paradigm is propagated
  • in Scene Outliner, select DirectionalLightStationary and change Mobility to Movable
  • add a Skylight

Hit Play and get this exceedingly ugly unacceptable rendering, notice the blocky wall shadows, the hardly perceptable player pawn shadow and unwanted light bleeding at the wall-ground intersection edges, all 3 most likely due to shadow map resolution:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/136375/img/screens/unreal03.png

Now I know I can tweak some shadow map settings in DirectionalLightStationary Details but nothing gets rid of the jaggies, no matter what I set! So this seems to me some new bug I’m afraid…

2

Hey metaleap,

Try going in to your Engine Scalability Settings and be sure the shadows are set to the ‘Epic’ setting. Use the image posted as a reference for locating the menu.

I say check here because I followed your steps and was only able to duplicate your results if my graphic quality settings were scaled down.

Cheers,

20414-enginescalabilitysettings.png
20414-enginescalabilitysettings.png773×617 327 KB

3

OMG so newbish of me, of course! Where was my mind today… thx heaps

4

AndrewHurley resolved it :wink:

5

Well not completely… If I “Play” in “Selected Viewport” or in “New Editor Window”, yes, but does not seem to carry over when hitting “Play” / “Standalone Game” (which I kinda prefer to switch from edit-feel to play-feel). Am I missing another setting somewhere or would that be a bug? Map is saved and so should be the “Settings”…

6

Have you rebuilt your scene and then saved?