Dynamic shadows artifacts

[Deathrey]

How are you doing normal offset in a material? I'm probably missing something here.

Using

#if SHADOW_DEPTH_SHADER

directive in a custom node you can offset vertices only for shadow rendering, when plugging in node networks in WPO material slot.

[Maximum-Dev]

Still no reply since 10 days ago. https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...shading-1.html

[Maximum-Dev]

Bumping both thread and report. Still no answer on either one. Not sure if Epic is even aware of this.

[jonimake]

I've been running into these same issues lately. I agree that something needs to be done to shadow maps and how they render. Roadmap shows percentage closer soft shadow filtering but imo something needs to be done to the non-soft shadow maps too.

[Maximum-Dev]

Interesting. https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...ows-on-terrain

[Zeblote]

Interesting. https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...ows-on-terrain

What's interesting there? I only see one guy pretending he "fixed" it by increasing the shadow bias and reducing the number of cascades, which is obviously not a solution.

[Maximum-Dev]

What's interesting there? I only see one guy pretending he "fixed" it by increasing the shadow bias and reducing the number of cascades, which is obviously not a solution.

It's interesting that thread is 2 years old and the issue is still carried until now.

[DamirH]

I find it interesting that there isn't a single reply to this issue nor the SSS issues on the forum. Either the community managers haven't been doing their jobs properly or there are no replies on purpose. A simple acknowledgement would go a million miles.

That being said, is this issue really that prevalent on finalized assets / scenes?

[Kalle_H]

I guess PCSS will will fix this once for all. Was it coming for 4.17?

[Deathrey]

I guess PCSS will will fix this once for all. Was it coming for 4.17?

Quite unlikely.

That being said, is this issue really that prevalent on finalized assets / scenes?

Hard to say. I guess fair answer would "not really", but it is situational and project specific.

[Chosker]

That being said, is this issue really that prevalent on finalized assets / scenes?

it is *really* prevalent on finalized assets and scenes in our project at work (can't show anything atm tho)

I guess PCSS will will fix this once for all. Was it coming for 4.17?

I think PCSS will be just a high-end feature as shadows are already expensive on their own (i.e. wouldn't solve the problem on mid/low-end PC's), and if anything I think it would only solve the issue at very close range (I don't expect PCSS to be usable at all distance ranges on full-scene Cascaded Shadows)

[Maximum-Dev]

I think it's better you guys post on the report instead of the thread.
Report: https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...shading-1.html

[Zeblote]

Does anyone from epic actually look at stuff on the answerhub that's not under "bug reports"? It doesn't seem like they do.

[Moth Doctor]

They do, I got many answers this way. But...
- You need to be very specific. If they know what exactly is your problem, it's lot easier to help.
- It's very difficult to reply if your problem is complex, would require research just to define what's wrong - AFAIK that's why many rendering issues are left without answer. It's not only UE4 problem. Usually when I'm working with engine team, it was relatively easy to get answer for gameplay problem, but the rendering guys often are like "I could solve it, but then something else gonna break or we'd worse performance, I need to think about it".

Once my friend-artist posted issue. No answer at all.
After 2 weeks I posted the same bug report, but I described it like programmer. Got answer the same day

But wait... isn't this like bug? Does look like new feature to implement, just malfunction

[Zeblote]

But wait... isn't this like bug? Does look like new feature to implement, just malfunction

It depends on your definition. It's not a bug in the usual way, as the problem is the lack of a feature - normal offset or slope bias

However every other engine from the last decade has this, so it's absence could be seen as a bug.