Shadow Quality through Opacity Mask Material

Development Rendering
1

I’m wondering if anyone can shed some “light” on this issue.

In the screenshot below you can see my material that has an opacity mask on it (little stick things). I’m trying to get the shadows that fall onto the floor to be much higher quality to show the shadows of the individual sticks. Any thoughts?

I made the light maps of each of the two objects 2048 and still not coming right…

://i.imgur/dGVyZ8Y.png

2
  1. do you have a lightmass importance volume in your level?
  2. have you already rebuild the light in production quality?
3

How do I add a lightmass importance volume? Is this an option on the object, or an actual volume I need to place in the level?

4

You can find it under the volume tab

Here you can read more about it: https://docs.unrealengine/latest/JPN/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/Lightmass/index.html

5

Hi, Ok I found the lightmass importance volume, placed it in the scene, and made sure it fit around the entire object but still getting poor quality shadows. This is on “Epic” mode and using production light build?

Any thoughts on what else I should be looking at?

://i.imgur/vDpTxXG.png

6

Hi JustinSA,

Try adjusting the lightmap resolution on both your floor and your mesh. It looks like they may be too low. This can be found in the details panel for each one. Have a great day!

7

It looks close to my Shadow Issue, i solved it changing my directionnal light setting :

Cascaded Shadow Maps -> Dynamic shadow distance Stationary Light -> 0 to -> something like 10k

8

[= ;49830]
Hi JustinSA,

Try adjusting the lightmap resolution on both your floor and your mesh. It looks like they may be too low. This can be found in the details panel for each one. Have a great day!
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That’s the strange thing, he has already increased them to 2048 :frowning:

@JustinSA When the suggestion from Bakudan_kun doesn’t work, please check if you probably get any errors after you have build the light

9

Success! Thanks Bakudan_kun, increasing the Dynamic shadow distance Stationary Light did the trick.

The only thing now is that the quality of the shadow seems to roll off / blur at a certain distance from the camera - any ideas on how to increase this “view distance” of the shadows?

://i.imgur/gxHKZ5p.png

10

[]
Success! Thanks Bakudan_kun, increasing the Dynamic shadow distance Stationary Light did the trick.
[/]

What you really did by setting the dynamic shadow distance is enable a completely different, more expensive shadowing method (cascaded shadow maps). So it didn’t fix the issue so much as work around it.

The original artifact looks to me like limited material export resolution to Lightmass. In the material editor for that material, try increasing ExportResolutionScale and the rebuild lighting. You might need something like 10.

1 Like
11

[=“anonymous_user_4bb99abf, post:10, topic:4539”]

The original artifact looks to me like limited material export resolution to Lightmass. In the material editor for that material, try increasing ExportResolutionScale and the rebuild lighting. You might need something like 10.
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Although this is a very old thread i just wanted to confirm: For having blocky shadows cast through masked materials: DanielW’s hint solves the problem, namely increasing ExportresolutionSclae under Ligtmass settings for the respective material.

2 Likes
12

Thanks for confirming. I was wondering about what exactly can solve those kinds of shadow issues (unintended blurring and shaky opacity levels). Shadow Resolution in the directional light might also resolve those, specifically if the blurring is at shadow edges (otherwise known as shadow falloff).