Shadows ok in editor but too dark in packaged build?

Hi there,
Our team is stuck here on a showstopper bug that prevents us from deploying the next content update. Everything looks & works fine :
in the editor
in vr preview mode
in stand alone mode

However, as soon as we package and run the shipping build, all the shadows are completely hard black (see screenshot).

Also, if you right click on the editor project shortcut and “launch game” from there, same shadow issue.

It’s like the ambient cubemap intensity doesn’t get applied for some reason, while it clearly gets applied when running in the editor. We tried everything we can but we are pretty much stuck here so any help would be really appreciated! :=)

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Hi Illusionweaver,

Can you tell me a bit about your lighting setup here?

  • Are you using precomputed (lightmass) or dynamic lighting only?
  • What settings are you using for your Directional and skylight?
  • Does this reproduce in a blank default level as well with the same lighting settings or just your project map?

I’m in the process of testing this and setting up my own example to see if I can reproduce. In the meantime the information above would be helpful as well.

Thank you!

Tim

Hi Tim!
We are using dynamic lights only.
Below are the settings of my dynamic light

We are not using a skylight, we are using ambient cubemap intensity in the PP volume to soften the shadows during daytime.

(but I tried switching that to using a skylight instead and we have the same dark shadow issues on packaged builds but not in editor)

Using these settings for a dynamic light and assigning the Cubemap in the Post Process Volume (which I totally forgot about being there!) doesn’t appear to be an issue on my end in 4.11.2.

Can you test this in a blank project with something like the first person template and see if you get the same results. I had to change the lighting, remove the skylight, and add the cubemap to the ppv, then rebuild lighting to wipe the previously build lighting, but that was it.

Was this ever resolved? I am using the same setup with a Cubemap in the Post Process and dynamic lighting and also get no ambient light in a packaged build.

I’m assuming the OP already solved this long ago but digging into a related problem I managed to figure it out. Ended up being that the environment map I was using was from engine content and thus was not being cooked into the project. Copying that to the project and referencing that instead fixed the issue.

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In getting this issue now, very dark pack builds, ok in editor. Any chance of spelling out what you did step by step?

See my final comment up above. You are probably referencing engine content that isn’t getting cooked into your build.