Dynamic shadows artifacts

[Fiasco Games]

wao so it's a good news!! hope that EPIC solve this definitively!!!

[spacegojira]

wao so it's a good news!! hope that EPIC solve this definitively!!!

I wouldn't hold my breath, Epic is great at talking about features and things they are "working" on, and then they just get backlogged for a few years.

Let's not praise them just yet, before they actually fix this. Especially after keeping silent about this issue for over two years now.

[Skylonxe]

I belive it may be because of "Lightmass 2.0".

https://forums.unrealengine.com/deve...ngines-unigine

[StrangerGwenn]

Lightmass is for static lighting, this is a dynamic lighting issue that's completely unrelated to static lighting.

[Skylonxe]

Lightmass is for static lighting, this is a dynamic lighting issue that's completely unrelated to static lighting.

Linked thread indicates that Lightmass 2.0 could be RTGI and that can surely bring us more changes and new implementions then just a new lighting solution.

[StrangerGwenn]

That's like saying the next version of the PlayStation will be a car instead of a game console. Lightmass is a static lighting tool, RTGI is not static lighting, nor a replacement or upgrade of static lighting, it's completely unrelated tech. I'm sure the UE4 dev team is working on RTGI too, and they're supposedly working on a path tracer that would share code with the static lighting tool, so I can see where the confusion comes from, but the two are very different things.

[Skylonxe]

That's like saying the next version of the PlayStation will be a car instead of a game console. Lightmass is a static lighting tool, RTGI is not static lighting, nor a replacement or upgrade of static lighting, it's completely unrelated tech. I'm sure the UE4 dev team is working on RTGI too, and they're supposedly working on a path tracer that would share code with the static lighting tool, so I can see where the confusion comes from, but the two are very different things.

I know what Lightmass is... Lightmass is unreal's solution for lighting, of course, currently it is for building static lighting only. There is no reason why new RTGI could not share the same name just with v2 postfix. If you consider lightmass to be lighting tool, then RTGI can be named Lightmass 2, if you consider lightmass to be static lighting tool, then RTGI can not be named Lightmass 2. But that was not my point, I thrown Lightmass 2.0 name just as a potential name for new RTGI which could even replace baked lighting (however it is unlikely, that it will). The point is that I don't think Epic is ignoring this issue, they are likely working on something bigger, what will have impact on this issue too. And that thing can be RTGI.

[Zeblote]

Huh? GI is completely unrelated to this issue. Ray tracing is not a solution for years to come. This is about bad shadow filtering.

[StrangerGwenn]

I know what Lightmass is... Lightmass is unreal's solution for lighting, of course, currently it is for building static lighting only. There is no reason why new RTGI could not share the same name just with v2 postfix. If you consider lightmass to be lighting tool, then RTGI can be named Lightmass 2, if you consider lightmass to be static lighting tool, then RTGI can not be named Lightmass 2. But that was not my point, I thrown Lightmass 2.0 name just as a potential name for new RTGI which could even replace baked lighting (however it is unlikely, that it will). The point is that I don't think Epic is ignoring this issue, they are likely working on something bigger, what will have impact on this issue too. And that thing can be RTGI.

- Lightmass is Unreal's solution for static lighting and has been for literally a decade, it is an editor-only tool, not a part of the renderer. "Lightmass 2.0" has been strongly hinted to be a GPU-based, potentially path-tracing based evolution of Lightmass, it will still be an editor tool, not a game runtime component.
- RTGI cannot replace static lighting because RTGI, as the name indicates, is dynamic, not static, and static lighting is a crucial feature of a game engine. RTGI in UE4 will now come through real-time ray-tracing with DXR.

This issue here has absolutely nothing to do with either Lightmass, Lightmass 2.0, or RTGI. It is a shadow filtering problem. Nothing more and nothing less. Please read more into this matter before arguing.

[Skylonxe]

- Lightmass is Unreal's solution for static lighting and has been for literally a decade, it is an editor-only tool, not a part of the renderer. "Lightmass 2.0" has been strongly hinted to be a GPU-based, potentially path-tracing based evolution of Lightmass, it will still be an editor tool, not a game runtime component.
- RTGI cannot replace static lighting because RTGI, as the name indicates, is dynamic, not static, and static lighting is a crucial feature of a game engine. RTGI in UE4 will now come through real-time ray-tracing with DXR.

This issue here has absolutely nothing to do with either Lightmass, Lightmass 2.0, or RTGI. It is a shadow filtering problem. Nothing more and nothing less. Please read more into this matter before arguing.

I know that this is about shadow filtering and nothing GI related. Ahh, what I am saying is that development of RTGI/Lightmass or ANY other bigger lighting solution is probably reason why this is not getting love and it will eventually be improved together with some other, bigger feature. Get it?

[spacegojira]

I know that this is about shadow filtering and nothing GI related. Ahh, what I am saying is that development of RTGI/Lightmass or ANY other bigger lighting solution is probably reason why this is not getting love and it will eventually be improved together with some other, bigger feature. Get it?

Well obviously this problem isn't getting any lovin' because they focus on something else. Could be RTGI, could be the new coffee machine in the office, we simply don't know.

And I don't think betting on some other, unrelated feature to 'someday' be the fix for this problem is really a good way to go. Better keep up reminding them about it.
Not that it has helped much, but at least Epic can't get rid of this mark of shame.

Also, why the need to be rude to Gwenn?

[Chosker]

I know that this is about shadow filtering and nothing GI related. Ahh, what I am saying is that development of RTGI/Lightmass or ANY other bigger lighting solution is probably reason why this is not getting love and it will eventually be improved together with some other, bigger feature. Get it?

having raytraced shadows already working it doesn't seem likely that they would work on yet another dynamic + non-raytraced lighting solution that would have an impact on dynamic shadow filtering.
in short, I don't see how any improvements to static lighting [which might or might not come from raytracing] or any improvements to runtime raytracing stuff will contribute to fixing the problem described on this thread (aside from the likely statement of "raytraced shadows are there, use them to avoid shadow filtering problems" that we all fear due to raytracing cost / adoption rate / etc reasons)

[Skylonxe]

Well obviously this problem isn't getting any lovin' because they focus on something else. Could be RTGI, could be the new coffee machine in the office, we simply don't know.

And I don't think betting on some other, unrelated feature to 'someday' be the fix for this problem is really a good way to go. Better keep up reminding them about it.
Not that it has helped much, but at least Epic can't get rid of this mark of shame.

Also, why the need to be rude to Gwenn?

I agree, without Epic finally stepping here and telling something, we can just speculate. I was just trying to give us some hope that recent renderer and lighting works can eventually lead to solving this long time overlooked issue, probably nothing very constructive

[StrangerGwenn]

The crux of the matter is that there is no reason for shadow filtering to get improvements through these ongoing developments. If anything, knowledge of upcoming ray-traced shadows might just be why no one at Epic cares about this issue.

[spacegojira]

I agree, without Epic finally stepping here and telling something, we can just speculate. I was just trying to give us some hope that recent renderer and lighting works can eventually lead to solving this long time overlooked issue, probably nothing very constructive

Oh I understand, my hope lies more in someone from the community finding a workaround that we can use. Well hopefully I will find something myself soon, because my current project is playing in a desert and the shadow problem is really obvious there..