UDK - Shadows - Dynamic

Ace-Angel

Hey to all,

I need some quick help in this regards since I think I'm going to have a heart attack at this rate.

The gist is, I have several characters in my scene, which are moving in pretty much slow motion, with some light movement from...well, the lights. I want my characters (and one or two static-mesh assets) to have Dynamic shadows. For aesthetic reasons.

However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make them look decent. The shadow not only looks low-rez in quality (the dynamic ones), but the couple of static-mesh items get that weird, stripey, stenciles, hatching kind of look on them.

Also, my dynamic shadows are pitch black. I know for a fact that there was a option in which I could mess around to give my shadows lighter tones, but for some reason, is limited to Lightmass only (or atleast, that is the only place I could find the options to lighten shadows).

Anyone could give me a hand for these issues? I tried reading up on the documentation, but I cannot seem to find a solution to my problem.

NOTE: I'm using a DominantLight and previewing everything in the editor screen if that matters.

Oniram

if you make your dynamic shadows modulated can you change the color/value then?

Hellfire

Hi,

UDK-2011-10 used automatic modulated shadows for dynamic shadows without Lightmass. (i can not chance the shadow mode in this version)

but you can try:
View-->World Properties-->Lightmass-->disable "Use Global Illumination" and "Environment Intensity"
Add a skylight with 1.7 Intensity and #00B0DAFF Colorinformation


the hell

Ace-Angel

@Oniram - Well this is embarrassing. Believe me when I say I tried hitting up modulated shadow Mode, but nothing changed, yet now it works. Ugh, I don't know what to say, other then thanks, now I know I'm not going crazy.

@Hellifre - Ah, thanks, that helps, I didn't know World Properties had access to the light, thanks.

OK, I have couple of more issues, the quality of the Dynamic shadows for one. It seems like they're limited to 2K currently.

So I select my Light, and go to Light -> Light Component -> Max Shadow Resolution = 2048

I can't set it any higher, and I'm not getting any changes between Medium - High quality filters.

Also, I still am confused on how to get rid of the hatching shadows on the plane.

Lastly, I cannot seem to change the shadow LOD distance factor. I tried playing around with the Shadow Cascade and Fade values, but no dice.

Picture below with issues:

Oniram

that almost looks like there's a light function in place (for the hatching).

here comes a boatload of questions.. as ill try to test this myself.

is this occurring on all lights?
what sort of lights are you using? is it a dominant directional/point/spot?
do you have more than one dominant light (if so thats bad juju)?
is the mesh a skeletal or static mesh?
are the shadows being cast on a mesh or a bsp?

Ace-Angel

- Nope, not really, only Directional. The problem is, it seems like it had to do with the light angle. Which is vexing, because I have many 'walls' which are steep that needs some breaking, so I'm trying to keep them dynamic.

Apparently, steeps angles create this...hatching and acne with Dynamic shadows, but as I said, I need some of them to be dynamic for certain reasons, and am trying to keep light-bakes to a minimum.

- I'm currently testing with Directional, the other lights are much easier to control as of now. Point is fine, and Spot, from what I could see, was also fine.

- Nope, also, to make sure, I restarted with a default UDK scene. 1 Directional.

- I deleted all of my skeletal mesh in the scene for now, everything you see is Static. I'm trying to tackle one problem at a time.

- Not sure, the one in the image is from the startup scene in UDK, so I'm guessing it's all BSP, but my built scene, which is all static mesh, also more or less has the same issues.

PS: I didn't touch the light function, or put in any shadows. Everything is pretty much just either drag and drop or BSP. Not sure if this matter, but I didn't apply any materials to my mesh in the scene.

SirCalalot

You could try changing the settings of the Cascaded Shadow Maps in the DominantDirectionalLight properties:

Whole Scene Dynamic Shadow Radius - 2048
Num Whole Scene Dynamic Shadow Cascades - 10 (max)
Cascade Distribution Exponent - 1

This will make Dynamic Cascaded Shadow Maps appear on objects at around 2048 units from the camera with the highest resolution. The shadows also blend between texel resolutions based on distance to the camera relative to their screen-space pixel resolution.

Did I put that clearly? I don't think I put that clearly.

Ace-Angel

Nah, I think it's clear enough what you mean, thanks, I will try that when I get the chance.

SirCalalot