Cryengine: How do i get softer shadows and shadow colour on my terrain?

dmilligan277

Hi everybody,

So as the topic title suggests i am looking to get softer shadows and also if there is a way to get some colour into them as well as brightening them up a little. Any ideas?

Also if anybody has some tips on how to get a more realistic lighting setup in general then i would love to know of it. I have seen some really realistic lighting setups (see the realistic forest image) but have no idea how to achieve them.

I am using the latest paid version of Cryengine, 3.6.7.

dmilligan277

Anyone?

Fefs

Hi, Im not very experient but I think this can help you a bit, is a book named Lighting & Rendering by Jeremy Birn I started to study and the theory can be apply for any system...

Hope it is helpful

sulky

I think this is a thing for an environment probe... But i can be wrong its been a while since i have used cryengine.

dmilligan277

Yeah environment probe sorted out the colour and brightness for shadows but I still can't get the softness. I have been told to change the shadow jitter value but it doesn't seem to have any affect...not for terrain anyway. Any ideas for that??

leleuxart

Check out the penumbra CVars, i think CRYENGINE still supports variable penumbras through DX11. Check out the shader CVars too.

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Soft shadows as in smoother edges or not as dark? The latter can be done through probes and hand-placed lights(or GI if you switch back to Deferred). If CRYENGINE still supports variable penumbras, shadows should already be softer the farther away they are from the light source and main shadow casting object, although the extent of how well they work with terrain shadows is unknown to me.

dmilligan277

I'm just trying to soften the shadows, softer edges yeah. So what setting should I look at for that? As I said I tried shadow jitter but it doesn't have any affect on the terrain shadow. Where do I find the penumbra CVars, I'm unfamiliar with that?

dmilligan277

Also while I am here can I ask why it seems that my textures are becoming over exposed in the terrain? I have a modest lighting setup but the terrain textures are getting bleached out a bit, any advice on what settings might be doing this?

leleuxart

It should be r_shadowadapationsize I think. Make sure you're on the highest visual setting in the engine as well, since it's a DX11 tweak. Some of the shadow commands are also overwritten each time you adjust the Time of Day, so I'd be sure not to move that around after you change something.

Did you tweak the tonemapper? And your terrain textures are following the usual pipeline of a low-res color texture and the high-res, high passed detail texture? Are they using the right shader- Terrain Layer, I think?

dmilligan277

Ok so i tried the r_shadowsadaptionsize and it didn't have any affect on the shadows?? Where are the tonemapper settings, i have not used them before?

Yeah my terrain textures follow the exact pipeline you mentioned so i have no idea why they are showing overexposed/bleached out...any more ideas?

dmilligan277

Here is an image to show what i mean by the textures bleaching out...

sulky

For the bleached out texture try to put a neutral grey in your diffuse color swatches in your material. Something like a 128, 128, 128

melviso

Wow... I am experiencing the same thing. No way to make soft shadows in Cryengine/ Lumberyard? Common it's 2017. Isn't this suppose to be a feature by now?