Dynamic Lighting and Landscapes

Hi there, I am noticing that lighting on landscapes looks pretty much unacceptable when using a dynamic directional light. It looks blocky as though the landscape is not a smoothed mesh. I have read that increasing my shadow bias helps the issue, but it makes everything else look terrible. Does anyone know if this is on the roadmap to be addressed, or if there is a fix? If I adjust the lighting to rid the landscape of these blocky shadows, nothing else is shaded properly.

This is rather not lighting but correct landscape problem. I have dynamic light only and I use landscape and no problem like this.

Check on empty level, create landscape in editor, do simple sculpt and check - you have problems or not.

I think in you example, you have wrong landscape dimensions or/and bad sculpted terrain. In short words, you have to smooth more your terrain.

Check this guide Landscape Technical Guide | Unreal Engine Documentation and all connected docs

I use different software and not remember scale, now working on other project. Did you follow this guide A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Unreal Engine Forums ?
Anyway, try this test with landscape created in editor - better in clean project and you will see this is lighting or landscape dimensions.

Let me check on my side. I have 4.19.2 but I had no issues like this with 4.18

This is third person template level, landscape created with default settings:

Looks smooth

I use here default settings from third person level template, just I use dynamic light only. Make sure you have all set as movable - light, sky etc and you have disabled Static shadow everywhere.

Hard to say, maybe gpu? Or other project settings. Maybe you changed something with lod?

This landscape was brought in from world machine using the recommended tile sizes from that guide, and a 1 meter per pixel density. Should that be increased in detail to 0.5 meter per pixel or more?

Fresh project, zero changes, made a landscape in the editor, sculpted a bit and added a material.

interesting. I’ll update the engine and try that. If it’s not that, I will have to do some digging

I have easy solution for you - we can exchange our gpu - I have 550Ti :smiley:

Ok, I did another test and I see similar problems:

With that detailed sculpting, landscape need bigger resolution, smaller parts. I created my landscape some time ago and I had a lot of test to get best result - mainly resolution.

But you must be ready for some compromises, because maybe you need less details or bigger landscape resolution. But finally, triangles are not that important and with landscape size I had never problem even on max settings.

Working with landscape remember, what you have from World Machine or other software is not final terrain mostly. In my case, I had good resolution for Hills etc, but I had to increase it, because many problems with roads for example, what I created later.

You can compare your settings with Landscape Mountains project, but I don’t know your world size and game type - fps, tps or flying sim, car game.

Well, I understand, but nice try! :smiley:

gpu is nvidia gtx 1080ti, and I haven’t touched the engine config files. project settings are all fresh in my test (first person template). The issue goes away at a distance due to cascaded shadow maps, but it would be nice to leave them so that I get detail up close. Try setting the view mode to lighting only, go closer, and see if you notice it there

Oh right and it is much more apparent if you angle the directional light more instead of having it mostly shining straight down

Ok thanks for your help, and I’m glad that you were also able to reproduce it. As for exchanging graphics cards, I’m not too sure about that. Maybe if I win the lottery or something because I’m broke after buying that beast haha!

haha no harm in trying

There is a forum thread with all details about hows and whys of the issue.

Long story short, your actions should be aimed at increasing landscape density while also reducing shadow filter size, supplemented by increasing shadow bias when practicable.

Thanks for the info! Looks like is just needs some good old tweaking and compromises.