weird shadows on static meshes

anonymous_user_041c33bd · April 8, 2015, 4:39pm

Hi
I’ve been trying to light a desert landscape, I’m getting weird shadows on my static meshes.
I initially lit it with a directional light, but was having trouble getting decent AO, so I brought in a SkyLight, but I couldn’t get decent shadows from the foliage, so I turned the directional light back on all of a sudden got these weird shadows (seen in the pics below). These shadows were not in previous light bakes.

Has anyone come across this before, or have an idea about the best way of lighting a desert scene with static meshes and some simple foliage?.
Many thanks in advance.

anonymous_user_776011b61 · April 8, 2015, 5:24pm

There is no shadows off the rest?

Is there a reason your landscape is not cast shadows, or is that in the same issue?

anonymous_user_a08c0bf2 · April 8, 2015, 6:02pm

Hey ,

When you were switching the lights within your level, did you build the lighting each you changed them? Also, were any of the meshes moved between the you changed one lighting, built it and then changed it to another? The only way that I’ve been able to get a similar issue is by switching the lights, moving the static meshes around and not building the lighting. Once I built the lighting, the shadow issue went away.

Please provide additional details regarding what you’re doing so I can try to reproduce this in-house. If it’s a bug, I’d like to get it in as soon as possible.

Thanks!

anonymous_user_041c33bd · April 9, 2015, 8:25am

Hi,
there are the other usual shadows, the landscape shadows are working as expected, it’s just these weird lines on my large static meshes.

anonymous_user_041c33bd · April 9, 2015, 8:49am

Hi ,
yes I’m pretty sure I built the lighting each I changed the lighting setup.
Oddly when I move a static mesh now it loses some of the ambient baked lighting, as would be expected,
(see attached pic) but keeps the weird baked shadows.
information

In summary my steps were
bake with directional light, all fine,
turn off directional light, add skylight, bake with skylight, all fine,
turn directional light back on, bake with directional and skylight
problem occurs.

I’ll do some more bake configurations/digging today to see if I can get any further.

Cheers,

Sheepy85 · April 9, 2015, 9:02am

Hi,

I had the same issue in some mesh. 2 things can make this.

try re-import your mesh and recalculate the normals (in import settings or mesh edit have a small down arrow in the details panel) this was my problem
your texture is not in NxN size or too small (64x64 the default I think. Try use 512x512 for big mesh)

anonymous_user_041c33bd · April 9, 2015, 11:48am

Hi ,
following on from your suggestion, I basically deleted the directional and sky lights. Built lighting. Re added the lights, built lighting and it worked.
I think adding the sky light while turning the directional light on/off somehow messed up the lightmapping?
Anyway - thanks for your help.
Cheers,

anonymous_user_a08c0bf2 · April 9, 2015, 2:30pm

You’re welcome ! Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Cheers!