Depends on what light more you are in - I think this is Cascade that is causing the effect.
Because things are Oh so different from engine version to engine version, you should try the “learning” tab. Something like this - though it’s really Not what I was looking for
Try and stick to the Epic content, since anyone can write trash that ends up in the learn tab now apparently.
IDK if anyone happens to remember or know the video where they thought the light masterclass with all the bells and whistle’s - including how to use a calibration cube?
I’ve fiddled with the lights some more. I’ve tried a directional light with a sky light, but that didn’t work out, so I went back to two directional lights. The road object is still on static for lighting. I’ve watched the video you’ve linked, but there were some features I wasn’t able to find. Probably due to the example video being done in Unreal Engine 4. Other options, like “Occlusion Max Distance” were grayed out, so I couldn’t try them. This is what I have now:
Looks like the edges are too sharp. I’m going have to smooth them to get rid of those lines. Then I’m going to lower the light intensity, and that’s probably it.
Well no, what you need to do is make sure the smoothing group for the mesh is correct and that the material Normal doesn’t somehow change that mesh information (on that note, you also need to make sure the mesh normals you define on the DCC end up making it into the engine after import).
There is no real reason that geometry that is say an hexagon has to look like an hexagon when the smoothing group on the mesh is exported correctly (meanong that it can look like a round piece) - naturally, if you can afford it you would double up the geometry as well, but this isn’t a requirement.
The other thing you can do is to just make geometry that is much more dense and detailed, and bake the normal map into the less complex geometry - because again all we care about for the light to work in engine is what the final normals look like.
Don’t know if this is any good, but it is the name of the process you want to follow along for info on making things less expensive but still good looking.
Bake Normal maps from high res to low res.
PS: I think the light looks much better, but you should never have more than one directional light in a scene.
Looks way better, but I would suggest baking down the normal for it to take it up to the next level.
What is isn’t going to change is the tips of the geometry of the connection on the street - that section is indeed something you could add more geometry too if you are concerned of it looking “poligonish”.
Before you do however, have a look at TombRaider’s 1 face - and realize that Ngons are just normal. Most players won’t even notice it.
Is it worth modifying? Depends on what your scene/performance needs to be. On mobile, this is already overkill for instance.
PS:
I have no idea what your end goal is, but you may want to make the pieces separate and modular at this point?
I’d suggest having a 1x1m base of Flat, 90degree turn, 45deg turn, and whatever else seems appropriate to create a kit you can use to generate geometry in engine by placing the items.
What you do need to remember is to then duplicate your working level, and use a new one that you merge the geometry in via Merge Actors function. This is actually critical when working with modular sets, because the less overall draw-calls you need, the better the performance will almost always be.
However, it also has to be done intelligently - don’t just go merging everything into one thing, that’s going to hinder performance instead.
Thanks for the advice. I’m just trying to add more pieces to my work portfolio. The more variety the better, but they have to be done well. My strengths are hard-surface objects. These are my first buildings.
