Als Procedural Mesh Components are fully dynamic generated, i want to calculate shadows with distance fields AO and Traced Shadows. This isn’t working right now because i don’t see any distance fields when visualizing. Can i add this with tweaking my vertexfactory or maybe scene proxy?
Thanks in advance,
Unfortunately distance fields are built offline and not available at runtime, largely due to the high cost of building them. This does limit the fidelity of Lumen lighting in scenes based on procedural geometry. I’m not sure if Epic plan to come up with some runtime solutions in the future (to support more live proc gen workflows), but it will require some heavy lifting on the engine side (likely on the GPU).
As a workaround in the mean-time I’ve been placing ‘bounce panels’ inside proc geometry using scaled planes (actual mesh assets that have SDF info). This helps with the GI/AO lighting effects, especially in corners. I have found this to be most effective on walls and not having much effect on the floors, but your experiences may differ. Worth testing by placing some by hand in the scene to see what works. Not ideal, and extra cost/hassle, but it works well enough for us and maybe your use case too.