sg.ShadowQuality, removes DistanceField shadows

Hello, yes it’s me again !
I have a new problem regarding distance field shadows. I converted my project of an open world-ish map - from baked+cascaded shadows to DF+cascaded.

The problem is everytime I set the ShadowQuality from the scalability menu to anything else but epic, DF shadows completely dissapear .

This happens with the editor quick settings menu, with command or with a quality settings blueprint menu I got from the asset store . The last one just uses a widget to apply scalabilty settings with sg. commang as far as I see .

I am wondering if this is intended or not, the same heppns with the Kite demo.

If it is intended is there some work around to be able to set quality options for cascaded shadwos, and for example not tough the DF shadows.

I tried each of the sub commands of the ShadowQuality, from the scalability document.

r.LightFunctionQuality=1
r.ShadowQuality=5
r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=4
r.Shadow.MaxResolution=1024
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.03
r.Shadow.DistanceScale=1.0
r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=1.

Hi Samuil,

For Distance Fields it is required to use EPIC quality or at the very least making sure that r.ShadowQuality is set to 5 via you execute console command node in your Level BP or elsewhere.

If you want to affect the CSM quality or otherwise you can do this independently via the same method without affecting Distance field shadow quality since the quality of the shadow is determined by the distance field mesh resolution in the static mesh.

Using the scalability settings is more of a broad blanket of settings, but using the execute console command node in BPs can be more helpful in getting the specific results you need.

If you’re ever unsure about a console command you can try looking at all the console commands by using the “DumpConsoleCommands” which can be viewed fully if you open the Window > Developer Tools > Output Log.

Try looking at the “r.” sections for specific CSM and shadow related commands. If you’re confused about what any of them do you can always enter the console command with a space and a “?” at the end to get the tool tip.

ie. r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades ? will show “The Maximum number of cascades with which to render dynamic directional light shadows.” It will also show the value that is set currently when you do this as well.

I hope this helps.

Tim

Thank you, thats great information to have !