I think there is something wrong with latest VXGI branch related to ray-traced distance field shadow.
are some images taken from my current project to show the problem.
The image above is the VXGI branch that was released on 28th May. Ray-traced distance field shadow works perfectly, soft shadow it there and you can see it.
The image above is the VXGI branchi that was released yesterday on 4th June. With ray-traced distance field shadow on in point light detail settings, there is no shadow shown in my scene. However if I turn off ray-traced distance field shadow off, the normal shadow effect still works without any problem.
The image above shows that editor crashed during building mesh distance fields. It happens every time when I tried to load Sci-Fi hallway showcase. The branch was successfully built without any error and warning. So I can confirm that the latest VXGI branch is not working properly with shadow features in Unreal Engine 4.
After I encountered shadow problems, I switched to previous version and it still works. It is still good enough for my project on current stage. However, I noticed that VXGI doesn’t work well with distance field shadow as it does with normal shadow or CSM.
are 2 images for comparison.
Image 1:
Image 2:
Image 1 is ray-traced distance field shadow on and image 2 is off. From what I see, when I turn ray-traced distance field shadow on, the diffuse bounce GI in unnoticeable. However, when I increase indirect lighting intensity to 5 times, then bouncing lights become more obvious and my scene looks more real. In image 2, I disabled ray-traced distance field shadow. I didn’t have to change post process settings, VXGI worked as it should. It looks good to me. I am not sure is a bug or VXGI intended to behave like that with distance field shadow.