Hey Guys,
I have been trying to make a functioning and pretty dynamic Time of Day change.
I was really happy when they released the ray traced distance field shadows!
When I turn cascade shadow maps off, and only run on distance field shadows, I get a very pretty outcome, but the landscape does not cast a shadow!
(side note: I have figured out that BSP’s do not come with a Mesh Distance Field, thats why I made them into meshes)
Here you can see that all my objects in the World cast a shadow (since they are meshes).
My Landscape however only works with cascade shadows.
If I setup Cascade shadows to be pretty (Dynamic Shadow Distance MoveableLight ~5000), I won’t get darkness when the sun goes down and a bunch of sun shining through the floor (yes my sun turns off, when below a certain rotation, but thats should not be the solution)
If I set Dynamic Shadow Distance Moveable Light to something much greater, for it to cover the whole landscape (tested it at ~70000), I will get totally blurry shadows, and only ray traced shadows for stuff that is way too far to see anyway.
Is there a way to give the Landscape a simple Mesh Distance Field?
I tried the cheating way by putting a 40000x40000 size mesh under the landscape, to produce the Distance shadows I want, didn’t look very pretty (since its just a flat shadow, instead of beeing formed by the landscape)
If you can direct me to anybody or anything that explains how to use dynamic lighting properly, you would make me a very happy man! I looked at almost every findable YouTube tutorials (from tesla, n0b0dy t(something)gaming and way more)
I also couldn’t figure out a good cascade and DistanceField shadows balance, how ever I play around with the settings, there is always a “no shadow zone” (where it switches from cascade to Distance) at a certain distance from the camera
Here you can see that the Landscape casts “shadows” on itself, but no where else.
and settings included
I’ve tried to see if I could get the same results as you, but have not been able to see the same thing.
For my setup I’ve used Tesla’s setup for a dynamic day system to have the light move across the sky.
I’ve setup my light to be movable with cascaded shadow maps turned to 0 and ray traced distancefield shadows enabled.
I’ve placed two pillars in my scene to see if they are casting shadows on the landscape along with using the movable light for the dynamic daylight system.
Can you test this most basic setup in a new blank project and make sure that it’s not a project issue vs setup.
I can also get very crisp ray traced distancefield shadows.
I maybe should’ve been a little clearer.
As you can see there are fine shadows at the door frame and for the “ball” aswell.
I want the landscape to cast the same style of shadows, or if possible only use cascade shadow maps for the landscape, while everything else is still using ray traced distancefield shadows.
(My goal: the blue marked area should be shadowed)
(I have tried Landscape to be “shadowed as if it were two sided”, but this only helps for cascade shadow maps)
Ok, thanks!
I will then just be using simple static meshes placed beneath the landscape!
P.S. just a simple addition to the blueprint editor:
While pulling off of a node, (in order to link it to something)
you should be able to hold either CTRL or ALT to keep linking with that node. That way you won’t have to pull it off multiple times.
Clicking and dragging from node → before linking it to another node hold a button → let go of mouse button while holding a button → node is linking, but still under mouse cursor → while still holding a button (CTRL or ALT), you can click to link it to more additional nodes → letting go of the button will end multiple node linking method.
Didn’t know where else to add this, unfortunately.
