Shadow Banding

Development Rendering
1

I haven’t done much lighting in the last few builds, but I started on a new scene this week and I noticed some weird blotching on my bakes (it’s subtle, but there, but I only have on directional light in the scene coming in through a window so it wasn’t obvious what was going on). I thought it was maybe lightmap res but I cranked that stuff up and it was looking identical. I went ahead and made a new scene with two props and a directional light. Even though the platform the prop is on is using a 512 lightmap it has this really strange banding going on (and it seems like the higher up I go on the lightmap, the more banding it gets). I have never seen this before. Usually drag/drop lights cast decent shadows. For grins I checked the “Area Shadows” options and I the results were as I would expect (the pixelation/banding on limited by the lightmap resolution).

So, anyone know what’s going on here? It’s probably something stupid that I am doing wrong, but I haven’t had much time to explore the 4.14 update yet.

BANDING SHADOWS (standard light dropped in)

standard.jpg
standard.jpg1231×1043 115 KB

After area shadows checked (no other changes)

area_shadows.jpg
area_shadows.jpg1231×1043 82.2 KB

Any help would be appreciated. Haven’t had much luck finding this specific issue online.

Josh

2

Do you have a lightmass importance volume in the scene? What’s the scale of the assets?

3

Yes I have the importance volume. And the the piece the letters are sitting on is a little stool, they are both world-accurate to scale with the player.

Josh

4

are you rendering at Production quality?

5

Have tried production, same results.

6

I’ve been getting the exact same problem with 4.14. Did you or anyone find a solution to this hideous issue?

Cheers!