hi.
I’m new to UE. can anybody tell me why my landscape in lit view looks much better than path tracing? how can I solve those blocky shadows?
there should be enough subdivisions for a smooth result. the geometry is exported from maya as FBX. I believe normals are fine. I’m using directional light. UE 5.3.
I’d appreciate any hints.
thanks.
Maybe it is a problem with the geometry in Nanite. Try the following console command:
r.RayTracing.Nanite.Mode 1
thanks, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference
raytracing.shadows.avoidselfintersectiontracedistance 1?
no visible effects : (
seems like disabling nanite and increasing subdivisions brings the look closer to the smooth lit view. I’m still confused though. I though path tracing was supposed to be superior. is it not or am I still missing some proper solution?
The path-tracer is radiometrically superior to any other form of lighting in unreal, but nanite makes it interesting: the high-res nanite meshes can’t be directly used by the path-tracer, so lower res proxy meshes are used by default. The shadow clipping you’re seeing here looks to be that, but it depends on what the material is made out of.
Also, since the path-tracer is so high-precision, it can sometimes reveal problems in the original assets that basic shadowmaps or N.L were hiding.
I also think I mistyped that last command: r.RayTracing.Shadows.AvoidSelfIntersectionTraceDistance 1
thanks for your replies.
the thing is, when I check the wireframe, the sharp shadows edges appear exactly along the edges of the original topology - not the low poly proxy. and I’ve tested the geometry extensiively in multiple applications - it renders smoothly without any more subdivisions.
as for the material, I tested many and again, no difference to the problematic areas.
the command seems to make a change, based on what I see in the console, but no value results in any visible change. it doesn’t even restart the path tracing progress bar, so I guess it’s doesn’t do anything? unless I do something wrong.
You can disable nanite on that mesh. Or maybe put a 0 into the mesh properties (not the actor), called something like nanite error fallback, or something like that. That’s to force using the highest nanite’s ‘LOD’ on that certain mesh
I have the same issue. Did you find a solution? I get this problem even in basic sphere. With or without nanite it’s the same.
Same thing. Would love to know a solution. Just dragging the default sphere and having pathtracing on renders jagged shadows. Virtual shadow maps are off and Nanite is not enabled on this sphere here. Lit mode renders good but pathtracing shadow looks jagged like this.
Ah, I see. It looks like it’s just the shadow terminator problem rearing its’ ugly head again. Basically, that sphere has normal interpolation, so it shades like it’s a smooth sphere. But if you look at the outline of it, it’s actually a pretty low poly geometric object, so the actual geometry that is casting shadows is what’s causing the issue. VSMs have some biasing built-in to try to fix it but PT does not, so I think you’ll either have to up the sphere’s geometric resolution or find a CVAR that lets you add a ray bias.