This is just shape_cube from the starter content. I just made a new project ( works fine there ) and migrated the starter content into my project with the problem.
Plonk the cube in a default new level, and when I make the skylight dynamic I see these blobs on the mesh!
The point is, the blobs are appearing on A LOT of my meshes, it’s really not ok :-/
It’s not the material, it’s not the lightmap, it’s not the cubemap yada yada yada, because (A) I didn’t change any of that and (B) I have checked stuff like that while trying to find the problem.
My feeling is that this problem is related to the following actions:
I fiddled with the engine scalability settings in the editor, put the engine on medium.
The engine then decides, hey I’ll compile 20,000 shaders
I thought, no thanks, and just closed the editor
Now I think I should have let it compile those shaders and then set it back to epic. Too late now. I’m assuming some shaders, or something, somewhere in the bowels of the engine is not right.
I removed the DDC ( derived data cache ), and yes, everything has re-compiled. Just as if I’d only just downloaded all my assets. But I STILL have this brown blob problem!
Has anyone seen this? Does anyone know what it is? How to fix it? Etc?!
Yeah, so changing the distance field params in the skylight makes a difference, but doesn’t fix it. I also see this problem in the material editor preview. Is MDF involved there? ( I know very little about it ).
HM chiming in here, not exactly like OP but very close, I get blotches of light and shadows,that at worse block shadows on ONE of my projects but I seem to be able to get rid of it if I use say ,sand texture,but my issues are terrain,not objects ,that I’ve noticed.
I thought I’d checked but I’ll make sure to verify DFAO .
I’ve asked on answers and here and so far this is the only response even if indirect, that I’ve seen to date, sadly ( BUT ty! for also chiming in ).
Just for verify on my own part,here is some of what I’m seeing on terrain at least,and its consistent on all but a few tiny pieces of terrain:
OK altering /removing DFAO…turned off ambient occlusing assuming that impacts DFAO, didnt’ help, unless a restart is mandatory, system not indicating that though,anyway here is blotchiness on terrain,as abve but in vast open areas:
It seems like something’s got screwed up with the way meshes are self shadowing. To fix a basic engine shape ( sphere etc ), I have to crank the self shadow bias up to 100. It doesn’t even have ‘generate mesh distance field’ set…
Is there somewhere to set this globally do you know?..
Forgot to post this, showcasing in ugly terms the problem of these ‘blotches’,wish I knew how to fix, but nothing works at least so far :
So I get this by starting to walking over terrain nearing close to shadows ,in this case,but the blotches show up everywhere, but some smaller areas.
They even affect one of my meshes , that has in this case , burnished steel material, and instead of how that looks, its ‘darkened’ severely.
I have one project working fine ,fixed it by using Sand material instead of rock_sandstone,but that’s not a fix.
Hoping for answers as this is no way to do game dev. I hope its just some setting I changed,but if so its hidden somewhere as I’ve gone through every component in World Outliner, and I can’t find anything.
Yes First thing I did on seeing this thread, if you mean turning values down to 0 on atmospheric fog ( Odd you can’t just turn if OFF enirely, because occlusion combine mode has minmax only) then ya I did will turn off under project settings ( in project where I’m having troubles, can;t do atm in another project ) . I’ll do so in a bit and update. Do you mean DF entirely ? I"ll check that too.
Are you both utilizing Light Propagation Volume at all? It has problems with self-shadowing and back in version 4.20 cannot be confused with Lightmass GI because it is somehow not compatible by being dynamic GI. It looks like a bad mixture of lighting techniques producing the splotches and blobs. I’m having a similar issue when I first open new projects too, and start modifying a few settings.
I checked the preview in material editor and mesh editor in 4.23.1, and both seem to bring over settings from the level I’m working in. Actually, one of the issues I’m having carried over to the mesh editor, wherein facing with camera down on the floor or at a steeper angle than say 60 degrees from horizontal results in the light becoming super bright, and at a gradual rate. At first it was at a low angle, so between 15-40 degrees in the preview of mesh editor the light was initially really bright. Background cubemap image is disabled in all this…but occurs with it enabled too. It was happening in my scene, then happened in the preview of the mesh editor. Some of the lighting data is carrying over to the preview modes of editors. Whether it’s the light properties or mesh properties, or both, I don’t know.
That’s what I thought too. But it looked somewhat similar to my level in the preview window of the mesh editor when the brightening issue occurs. That’s what led me to think something is carrying over to it. How does a mesh retain such a blobby shadow in it? or is it not entirely a shadow, but a discoloration or a lack of alpha=1 part of the material so is merely not lit in those blobby / splotchy lines areas?
Not using LPV as I’d read from Tim Sweeney ,or somebody that LPV weren’t being maintained so no. I have a fairly large 2x2 world comp world so as I recall LPV don’t work out well there, dueto size compilation time and ssd space needed ?I’m not sure my current rig would be up to build anyway. Its holding well,but light builds with this project in doubt
On turning off distance fields, didn’t help sorry.
Your blob on mesh looks VERY much like in my 4.23 project where the out of box 3rd person char. has weird similar spots as well, as well funnily I guess, the very top of head a black spot. I also get green and blue areas on torso and shin area, and I’ve removed meshes that have that similar colored material, burnished steel but doing so makes no difference, all which I think I posted PIC showing that, if not:
Have you not aligned those terrain textures to world? They’re stretching hugely, and they look a bit desaturated, though I’m not sure if that’s intentional.
I’m on an Intel 5500U (5th generation) 2.4 GHz quad core laptop, with 6 GB RAM, and the graphics card is integrated, not a dedicated NVidia or AMD. The screen resolution max is 1366 x 768 too, so short of full HD (1920 x 1080p), and I don’t have a problem using an LPV as far as memory and processing. I fixed a shadowing issue using it by changing settings in accordance with the docs’ suggestions about what can cause leaks / bad shadowing. If you have a faster rig with more memory than I have, then I don’t understand how an LPV or a few would really harm the overall performance. Most of the stuff that’s said to affect memory and processing time drastically does so at small levels (say in the single MBs), and is not stuff that is in great numbers or humongous scales/sizes. So in terms of iteration and what’s being processed and utilized in memory on screen, within the current screen space, most things shouldn’t slow down the rendering of graphics and level detail. That’s especially for hardware such as 2080ti or 2080, and more current AMD video cards.
Have you seen demos of CryEngine ray tracing? They measure different graphics cards at different “scalability” settings such as Very High, Ultra High, and Cinematic, and each graphics card outperforms several others at a certain scalability setting. It’s interesting because those card makers are the primary two there are, other than Intel and perhaps a few others that are semi well known.
Simply because LPVs aren’t maintained doesn’t mean they aren’t going to work at all in a project, or be too buggy, and they’re really effective at changing lighting and shadowing to get particular results in localized areas of a level. The one volume I don’t see working well so far is the lightmass portal. It seems like it requires just the right setup to get it working right, and not contributing problems to interior scenes. However, I know a range of these features are rather new, and probably have not gotten the testing they require to diminish and thresh out the bugs / errors / incompatibilities. It’s not a wonder that most of the documentation has only made it to 4.20 at the latest in terms of version applicability. But in reading the version release notes of 4.23 and 4.24, not even in their entirety, there’s a plenitude of bugs getting fixed and new sub-features and tweaks being added. The docs are vastly behind the most current versions of UE, so it’s surprising much of the information in them remains pertinent.
I can’t align them to world, if its what I think you’re referring to, as once I do I can’t make any changes to terrain , is that still the case I wonder ( as UE4 warns user of that) I assume you’re referring mostly to the vertical stretching.
I’ve seen Cry Engine demo on RT’ing but I’m not familiar with the stats you state , but then I saw it months and since many things have occured.
Well, I have an i5-3570 Gtx 950 2gb and 8gb of slow ddr3-1333,ya OLD but so far overall I can’t complain, but building light as for many users, is another thing entirely.
My world comp world isn’t huge per se but very complex. I have to fix a few static meshes first then I can try again.
I could have swore someone, Tim, not sure atm, said LPVs wouldn’t work well for world comp worlds, but I’ll try to verify.
I did have once a LPV in world but lighting was taking forever so maybe as above I can revisit that.
Ya indeed,4.23 is a mess, and maybe my blotches are part of fixes in process I can HOPE ,assuming its not on my end and given 4.24.1 works fine on same world with same lighting components so, I’m rather sure its not me, but np either way.
