Forward Rendering Numerous Issues

I’ve just duplicated a project to test out how forward rendering works with it performance wise, but I have run into a litany of rendering issues, being:
The stationary lights generated by blueprints do not cast shadows,
Ambient cubemaps in post process volumes have no effect on the scene,
Exponential height fog applies the fog throughout the scene rather than based on height.

Hi Oscar,

Here’s a breakdown of what I found while testing the various issues you’ve reported here.

Stationary Lights in a Blueprint:

When I test this compared to a non-blueprint stationary light I get the same results for static objects baking and movable actors being lit by the stationary light.

Can you provide more details about your setup for this?


Ambient Cubemaps in PPV:

Submitted a ticket you can track the progress here: Unreal Engine Issues and Bug Tracker (UE-38371)


Exponential Height Fog:

I’m not seeing the same issue you’ve described. In 4.14 Preview 2 when I adjust the height settings and other settings to max values and type in higher values I get the same results I would expect for the Deferred Renderer.

If you have specific settings that cause your issue, please post your details here that can reproduce the issue reliably.

Thank you!

Tim

Thanks for your feedback on the forward renderer.

The Ambient cubemap is not supported in forward, it’s a legacy feature replaced by skylight so I don’t think we will ever support it in forward.

Exponential height fog - probably what you’re seeing is a side effect of the forward renderer computing fog per-vertex by default. There’s a project setting under Forward Shading where you can disable this. Alternatively you can add more triangles to the mesh showing the artifacts. In our Showdown demo only the distant buildings were low poly enough to cause a noticeable difference.

BP Light Shadows:

It seems to be an issue only in my project - thus caused somewhere in the project upgrading code I guess - as if I make a blueprint that just creates a point light component in construction script, it does not cast shadows; but if I try the exact same blueprint in another project, it does work.

Ambient Cubemaps:

From DanielW I now understand it to be an issue due to forward rendering, however SkyLight cubemaps do not function in the same way as PostProcess ones, so it would be good if it could be fixed.

Exponential Height Fog:

DanielW explained this well - changing the project setting solved the issue.

Also: Directional lights are also not casting shadows at all, whilst pointlight actors do.

If you Directional Light is set to Movable then that has not yet been implemented for 4.14. If you’re using a Stationary Light, the static objects will be baked and the Dynamic Object should be shadow casting, which is what I see in my test project.

Hey,

any idea as to when shadows from movable lights could happen?

This should cover your question. Ultimately, it’s on the TODO list but no guarantees when.