The deer asset has ‘[ x ]Dynamic Inset shadows’ and ‘[ x ]Far shadows’ enabled. Distance Field Soft Shadows are enabled for the sphere shadow (only for comparison…I know Dist Field Shadows don’t work with skeletal assets).
My issue:
The deer cascade shadow fades out too early for my purposes (around 2000 units from the deer) even though the deer is still quite visible.
Is this a limitation of Cascade Shadows in UE4 or is it possible to increase the cascade shadow fade out distance further (at least until the deer is too far away to see its legs) ?
-Disable the Dynamic Inset Shadow. This is really only useful for Cinematics where you would want a higher resolution for closer shots. This will give you a bit further distance.
With inset shadow disabled
Set the Far Shadow Cascade Count to something like 6.
Lower the Far Shadow Distance to something lower like 25-35k If you use the full 800000 units this will spread the cascades over a longer distance and lower shadow quality. Keep it reasonable and keep in mind that just because something has far shadow enabled it will not shadow always be shadowed to that distance. The bounds of the mesh and its screen size still play an important role.
You can try increasing the bounds scale slightly to help keep it rendered longer. I wouldn’t just up this value to an absurdly high value and definitely not for all or a lot of actors in the scene without understanding the implications of bounds scales. (I used 2.0 in the image below)
I’d really wish this information was easily available in the official documentation. But thank you for the answer anyhow.
Also, Epic, the technique Tim shared here is superior in terms of visual quality to the new contact shadows, which look grainy and produce undesirable artifacts at distance and in unpredictable places. Maybe something to look into here? Cheers.
