I have a level that is a mostly an interior scene. I’ve added as many stationary lights as I can without the engine complaining about overlaps. Nevertheless, there are areas which don’t provide much in the way of shadows for dynamic actors like players. This means that players that are not in the presence of a shadow casting light look like they are floating. So the question is, is there a way for the player to cast some sort of pseudo-shadow (for example, a darkish area underneath the player) to make him look rooted to the floor in areas with weak shadow casting lighting?
The epic ‘showdown’ demo used capsule shadows for exactly this purpose - it’s free to download.
It did not. Capsule shadows came to UR4 after Showdown demo was released. However, whatever Showdown uses for blob shadows is a good foundation to start with.
It would be nice if Epic could provide robust and perfirmant built-in blob shadow solution for (mobile)VR in 4.13.
Thanks for the correction - I have some research to do, as I thought blob shadows and capsule shadows were the same thing… :o
Whatever is in the showdown demo seems like a good place to start.
Well I tried the capsule shadows. But when I enabled it, I got an immediate crash with this error:
Fatal error: [File:/work/unreal/Unreal4.12.3/UnrealEngine/Engine/Source/Runtime/OpenGLDrv/Private/OpenGLUAV.cpp] [Line: 137]
OpenGL RHI doesn’t support RHIClearUAV.
I tried something old school that others may find useful, and that was simply using a blob shadow that follows the player around. This was done using a deferred decal placed at the bottom of the collision capsule. The shadow is not very strong – more of a tint. But it does help the player model look rooted to the ground. It’s a quick and dirty way to provide the look of ambient occlusion between the ground and the player.
I created a little tutorial series on how to create blob shadows as part of a larger series on simulated dynamic lighting for mobile platform projects. Maybe this is interesting for you? Check it out here:
I think Robo-Recall was using something applied to blob shadows and since it is for mobile you should take a look at.