Why are my shadows behaving weirdly?

I’m following the tutorial for time of day minus the skydome blueprint but my shadows are behaving really strangely


As you can see, some objects aren’t casting shadows at all and none of the shadows look right in the slightest for the scene. On top of that as the light moves smoothly along the shadows jump all over the place, even back and forth, which is extremely odd. I’ve tried changing a bunch of settings around, building the scene at all the various qualities of lighting, and so on but I can’t seem to get it to look right.

Its resolution is currently at 32, but I tried increasing it anyhow. It fixed the smaller objects shadows not showing up at all and generally made the shadows smoother looking most of the problem is still there. The shadows were still flickering, in totally wrong positions, and jumped back and forth seemingly randomly. When the sun is moving in a uniform direction, why would the shadows snap back and forth like that? I have no idea. I could fraps it if necessary to show what’s happening, but here’s a screenshot of what it looks like with the floor at 128 lightmap resolution for reference

Hey Elspin -

Ok so first are you using the LPV (Light Propagation Volume) mentioned in the tutorial? Also, what is the lightmap resolution of the ground assets you have in the level and have you set your directional light to movable as its mobility?

Let me know -

Eric Ketchum

The lightmap resolution of the floor is 32, but it still happened at 128. The lightmap resolution is 32 for everything else that has one. I’m not using a light propogation volume, but it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the tutorial. My directional light is set as movable, and it’s set to not cast static shadows.

The only other thing that I can tell is different from the tutorial is I am lacking a “skydome blueprint” because I can’t seem to figure out where that comes from

Hey -

Well I can clear up the Blueprint issue for you real quick. In your content browser, under View Options (lower right hand corner), check show Engine Content to true. You should now see an Engine Folder immediately above your Game folder. Click on it and run a filter search for “Sky”, the BP_Sky_Sphere, should be the first thing that pops up.

Just so we are on the same page, can you post a link to the Day/Night Cycle Tutorial that you are using, I want to make sure I am following exactly what you have.

Thanks -

Eric Ketchum

Alright, I’ve got a BP_Sky_Sphere in and my blueprint and level is basically matched exactly to the tutorial (here’s the one I’m following by the way A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums ), it’s just 2 pillars a floor and the level blueprint controlling things. The sky certainly looks nicer now, which is great, but the shadows still look like the sun is teleporting unfortunately. In the interest of making it as clear as possible what’s happening, I made a quick video of what’s happening - YouTube

Hey Elspin -

Can you post a screenshot of your Level Blueprint? I reproduced the tutorial and haven’t find any bugs like you are experiencing. Also do you have any scalability settings changed in the editor?

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

I have no idea what scalability settings are, I found them but I certainly haven’t changed them intentionally - they appear to all be at 50%/medium. My flowchart is here but it’s basically identical as far as I can tell http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r160/Elspin/daynightblueprint_zpsfd6863d4.png

Just out of curiosity I tried to do the tutorial again with a fresh map - exactly the same problem, no change.

Hey Elspin -

Change the Scalability Settings under Quick Settings >> Engine Scalability Settings >> Select Epic, and rebuild lighting. Does that fix your shadows?

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

Fixed! It’s finally sorted out, the shadows look like they should and they no longer jump back and forth. Thanks for all the help, I just wanted to say I really appreciate support from a member of staff, didn’t expect that.

Thank you for answer, it help me a lot.
Also, thank you for the question.

Best Regards