Volumetric Directional Lighting Sphere Issue

26688-normalsherebug.jpg

As you can see, my sprites are having an issue since the latest versions of the editor. They display a ‘sphere’ that contains the volumetric directional lighting yet outside this sphere area there is no lighting information.

How can I increase the sphere area so that all my effect is contained within this area of volumetric directional lighting?

Thanks!

Hey Bruno_G -

Do you have translucent distortion effects in your particle system running on a sphere mesh?

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Dont have any distortion effect at all. This is how my volumetric directional lighting looks like on all particles after 4.6 :/.

Did anything changed there or am I missing something?

Thanks

Hey Bruno_G -

I am still not able to directly reproduce this issue. This is my own results using a Lit Trans Cloud Particle System which is set to Volumetric Directional Lighting.

Have you recently upgraded to 4.6? IF so, can you check all your Engine Scalability settings to ensure that they are set to Epic? Also you are showing the Cascade Viewport is this same effect being seen in the Level Viewport as well.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Yeah I just kinda nailed the issue.

It happens that i need to move my textures pivot point up, but then the volumetric lighting reaches a visual limit of effect shaped as a sphere.


Also happens when i use Rectangle Screen Alignment in the Required module and play with uniform x/y size values to make the sprites wider like in this example:


How can i enlarge this area of effect (the sphere where the volumetric lighting is contained)?

I keep on seeing the spheres within my effects materials:

Hey Bruno_G -

Can you export that one module to a new particle system and migrate that system into a test map and see if you still experience the problem. If so, if you can please upload the sample project here (or via Private message on the Forums)

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

what module? why a test map? Not getting you. It will happen again no matter what map it is. Happens if I fiddle with pivot offset or random x/y values within the initial size module. It always happens with those two modules making the sprite go beyond the sphere area of volumetric directional lighting, I just wanna make that sphere bigger.

Just try tweaking a sprite’s pivot offset’s Y value to like 0.4 and you will start seeing the limit zone of the volumetric directional lighting.

I am not able to reproduce this effect even given your new information, you should not need to increase any volumetric directional light sphere, the lighting should be calculated by vertex of the sprites planes and not by any sphere of influence. I was hoping to get a look at your Base module which according to your pictures above seems to demonstrate the issue most evidently.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Ok grab this please: [link text][1]

Then open it in the editor and under the ‘ambient’ folder, there should be an effect called heavyflame.

You can grab that as an example. It should have volumetric directional lighting working properly.

But if you try to make the screen alignment as Rectangle (so you can therefore play with its x/y size values uniformly):


And then you give it more X size value so the sprites look wider, then the limit starts displaying:


.

I hope you can get the same problem :)! So you can see what i mean :slight_smile:

Lemme know please.

Thanks!

Hey Bruno_G -

In your Material, set “Generate Spherical Normals” to false and this issue will resolve itself.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

But then I lose the very effect I want! :frowning: which is the beautiful spherical blending of the lighter to darker tones of the maps light:

Spherical Normals ON:


Spherical Normals OFF:


This is the one effect I,m seeking in order to make my dust/smoke volumetric looking and matching/blending with the ambiance’s lighting theme :(. Otherwise this feature is pretty worthless, besides making the particles darker when blocking the sun.

This is a great feature for particle effects and I just cant get it right at the moment in UE4.

I would like to achieve something similar to this:

[link text][3] ← Specially at 1:05, isn’t that beautiful! :open_mouth:

or this:

[link text][4]

Also part of its current problems is that the lighting shifts when rotating the camera. So if you have a field of clouds with volumetric lighting, they will flick from darker to lighter tones when panning the player’s camera left and right which is rather unnatural since in order to see the part of a cloud that is lit by the sun you’ll have to completely move position and not just rotate the camera.

Would there be any solution to this at the moment? Specially the Spherical Normals issue, that’s why I was asking maybe for a way to increase its area of effect :frowning:

Hey Bruno_G -

I have submitted a bug report for this issue, UE-8181, and I will let you know as we continue to investigate a solution to this issue.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum