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Shading Render Problems in UE 4.25.4 (video)

Development Discussion Rendering
#1

So, I’m using 4.25.4, have a basic project with not much added to it yet. I’ve encountered several problems with the shading and rendering that I have encountered before, but am unable to solve thus far. I’ve tried multiple things for these same problems in previous projects, and in the project shown I have attempted a few things. Below I briefly describe the problems that I highlight in the video:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5wnAUJ5CBKg

  1. Shadows detaching from the mesh
  2. Shadow edges become blurry and aliased at particular distances with the camera (sharper up close, blurry further)
  3. Certain edges of meshes are lighter than the rest of the mesh
  4. Like #1, the shadows do not connect to the corners of the mesh

The scene contains a SunSky with stationary directional and stationary skylight. Most settings are default for those, except in directional I turned off Ray Tracing features, enabled “Use Area Shadows…”, and disabled Volumetric and Translucent Shadows. The brightness is 75000 lux, unchanged from starting the project. Neither Cascaded Shadow Maps or Distance Field Shadows are on. Both are disabled in the directional light, and Generate DFS is disabled in project settings. Ambient Occlusion in Post Process Volume is set at 0.3 Intensity and 100 cm Radius. Here are some of the project settings:

Does anyone know how to go about solving these problems, specifically? I’ve encountered these and similar issues in the past in 4.25 back to 4.23, and most of the time I was unable to solve each. I encounter certain edges being lighter than the rest of the mesh more frequently than the shadows detaching from the base. Changing Shadow Bias is usually not a full solution because it results in another loss of quality / completion of the rendered shadow…or crazy lines in the mesh surface. Please, if you refer me to a linked thread or other place on the web, make certain it actually solves one or more of the problem(s) I show in the video. Or at least that it is further along in solving these specific problems than me. I haven’t installed 4.26 yet, and would rather try to solve these problems in 4.25.4 than encounter them in 4.26 again. Thanks.

#2

You are using inset shadows on a large object. Of course its going to be low resolution. Make geometry static, use csm on stationary, or just outright use a movable directionallight

#3

I did have the same one with your 1,2,4 problem
I did tried rebuild with higher quality like: increase indirect light quality
And check the mesh intersection areas. Should be like my below picture
​​​​​​​HOpe that works with u
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#4

None of the meshes have dynamic inset shadows on. I tried making the 4 meshes all static, and built lighting again (production quality every build thus far shown). The shadows are no longer detaching, but at the corners they’re not connected (problem #4) entirely yet. I’m going to try increasing indirect quality in Lightmass settings, and then enable Ambient Occlusion in Lightmass World settings too. I forgot I had that disabled.

Increase of Indirect Quality did not fix any of the problems, and the blurriness of shadow edges became worse. I went to 2, then 3, and 5. I switched Direct Illum Occlus Fraction and Indirect IOF values (both in World settings) so Direct is 1 and Indirect is 0.5, and it’s not resolving. Enabling Amb Occlusion in World settings did not fix things or change much if anything.

As far as meshes intersecting / aligning, they’re all flush with nearby surfaces. There’s no intersection where part(s) of a mesh are inside another. It’s interesting you brought it up though because the side of the wall meshes that are directly lit by the directional light have a darker shade than the non-directly lit side. Next I’ll attempt to use “Generate Mesh Distance Fields” and enable settings for those in the meshes and lights. Thanks for the suggestions.