Why are my shadows bad?

[namrog84]

I had a relatively empty scene. I dragged in 2 assets (2 different assets pack)
I dragged in SkySphere(no actual light, just sky right?), Skylight(the actual ambient world light), and Directional Light(The thing that SHOULD cast shadows). Everything left as default.

As you can see on the left, my building shadow is bad. If I enable “Dynamic Inset Shadow” it becomes this
https://i.imgur.com/Px4Z8AV.png which looks great. but it says something about it being useful for cinematics, do I feel that is wrong approach.

The other issue is the tree isn’t casting any shadow at all.

I’ve gone thru all the settings for shadows/lighting and trying to just change things at random to see if I can find something that is useful.

Don’t need dynamic shadow on building. I think I need to improve shadow resolution or something, but can’t find the right setting.

But could use a mix of both static/dynamic on tree?
Tree blows in wind, thus it moves a little, but not too much? Higher quality baked shadow with low quality dynamic one possible?) What is good here

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks!

[namrog84]

Looks like the main thing was a console/ini setting not available in editor settings.

r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades was set to 1, but setting it to just 2 (higher is better but trying to not push it too much). This makes it considerably better at what I hope is minimal perf impact.

The effect of just changing this 1 variable

Edit: Also the other thing I missed was in “Settings” drop down → “Engine Scalability Settings” which also had a similar effect on improving shadows.

[anonymous_user_82ef4244]

Also, check lighting quality on drop down build menu. You can click on production to max quality.

Sometimes when you move and object static, render not preview correctly the shadows, you need to make build lighting only to see the correct shadow.

[FlameOfIgnis]

Its sometimes easy to miss, after you place your building, did you click build on the top menu?