What am I missing here today?
I can’t get soft shadows?
Are you using baked lightmass?
@BernhardRieder - for run time light evaluation I believe you’re only going to get what you’re looking for with ray traced shadows. From the looks of your renders it doesn’t look like Ray Tracing is enabled as the shadows are too hard and not exhibiting the typical ‘noise’ in a ray traced shadow. I just went through the same experience trying to set up a test case to match yours and found the same result you were getting. I found after following all of the steps outlined in this doc (and re-starting the edtior):
https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/…ing/index.html
… then I started getting the real-time feedback for my soft shadow settings that you’re looking for. I believe the key was switching Default RHI to DirectX 12.
For Point Light and Spot light, it´s the Source Radius, the bigger the radius of the light ( = bigger light bulb), the softer the shadow will become. For the Rect light its different, there it is the actual size of the rect light, that defines the shadow sharpness. A small rect light is like a narrow sharp beam, a big rect light can enlighten your objects from way more sides, leading to more light coming from the sides and soften the otherwise hard shadow. So your core shadow can get a soft edge, if more light can come from more sides and angles.
For visualisation:
thank you all… this all makes sense. @Suthriel thank you so much for posting also the video.
after updating to the new release and launching it … I realized dx12 was tunred off. that caused this confusion.
so yes, soft shadows work… but only if ray tracing is on… is there no way, to preview the soft shadows without ray tracing?
There’s Distance Field Indirect Shadows for movable primitives / actors. Set actor to movable, and in its Lighting tab of details panel, enable Distance Field Indirect Shadows. Then adjust min visibility. It works with distance field shadows, so the source radius of point / spot lights…soft source angle of directional…to control penumbra falloff. Does Source Length work for soft shadow adjusting?
Hello Suthriel,
do you have any other set up not showing in your video?
I tried in my own project, and built up similar set up, simple sphere and 3 different kinds light. The result is different, the shadow softness is not showing up, when I adjust source radius.
Thanks!
what stands out is your indirect lighting is set to default 1. Start with a high value like 10
Thanks for pointing it out Frankie, I will give it a try.
Yeah, this was a raytraced scene, so those particular shadows are from a scene, where raytracing is enabled (because the original question was about a raytraced scene).
In a normal non-raytracing scene, you have to go into your light, and enable “Distant field Shadows”. That will give you soft shadows too, not as perfect as raytraced shadows, but probably more accessible, because not everyone have a graphics card with raytrace support 
Indirect lighting should have nothing to do with hardness or softness of the shadows (and in my video, its at default 1 too), it´s for making bounce light more intense than it would normally be. So it should be global illumination related.
Indirect lighting
The technique of indirect lighting (sometimes called uplighting) uses one or more fixtures to aim light onto the ceiling and upper walls, which act as reflectors and distribute the light evenly throughout the room. Indirect lighting is a form of ambient lighting. Indirect lighting minimizes shadows and reflected glare.
Yeah, but it shouldn´t affect the borders of the shadows, that are created by the light sources. It makes the pitch black shadows less pitch black and lightens up the area, that light cannot reach in it´s first step, because something blocks it´s path.
Bounce light (with no bounce light or zero bounces, the cylinder would be all grey with no green):
Shadow areas and borders from a big light source:
The Umbra is that area, where no direct light from the light source can reach because of an obstacle. Without bounce light, this area is usually black (or whatever the current area light value is). If you have only one light source in your scene then this umbra area can only be lit by bounce light/indirect light.
Bounce light can (will) create new shadows, but it does not affect the borders themselfes created by the direct light, it just lightens up that area and make it maybe harder to notice the shadow.
Thank you Suthriel for the detailed information and pictures! Raytraced scene haha that was why! Thank you again
You can also adjust the source angle on the directional light. The closer to 0 it is the sharper the shadow. Not sure if that applies to other lights.