Try modulated shadows Claydough. The best I can think of. You will never get a physically accurate shadows in Unreal w/out 3rd party software.

only gives u 1 shadow correct?

same scene with two modulate shadow casters is psychedelic

You're not doing it right . You probably clicked and flipped so many options you're tainting the results. Make a new scene, place the model as static mesh, add a light and flick on modulate.

Not sure if this helps, I don't even know what shadow acne is. This is just Lightshadowmode_Normal, 2 dynamic lights and settings for the lights, static mesh and bsp. No soft dynamic shadows though. I had a go at the modulated shadows but the lights stopped casting a shadow altogether, probably like Lamont says and too many options already messed about with. A reset settings to default option would be nice.

shadow acne

thanks for the responses psixos and lamount,
if u back up in the thread, u will see I was looking for "dynamic" shadows solutions.

Not really interested in environments and level design
but shadows to show off animated character design ( skeletal mesh )

my problem with shadows dissapearing after rebuild was from the
"Use Direct Light Map" setting that is checked on by default when a light is created.

there is no shortage of static mesh lightmapping documentation.

my dynamic shadow notes so far... ( please correct me if anything below is obviously wrong )

2. shadow LOD causing shadows to dissapear at distances.
this may have been fixed ( @ service pack 3 ) as leaving shadow map
resolution @ 0 min and max results in no LOD popping. changing this number results in
LOD problems. either leave it @ 0 or:
upping the resolution to 1024 or above for min max will also git rid of the LOD ( in editor in
game application tests... at least so far )

3. The "Use Direct Light Map" check box in light properties will cause the shadow cast to dissapear from static and bsp surfaces after rebuild.

4. shadow filter quality: high / projection technique: BPCF gives best reults. ( still have shadow acne bias problems. z-fighting floating point errors )

5. force dynamic light checkbox nullifies all the shadow options and makes yer light a stencil shadow. ( stencil shadows will always have the aforementioned LOD popping/dissapearing )

6. Layer brightness. Using mutiple dynamic lights ( one for the ground and wall brightness/shadows and one for the character/skeletal mesh's brightness/self-shadowing ) with lighting channels for light linking assignment gives a lot of control over the final look..

I don't have any skinned characters to test on.

during import any model can be imported as a skeletal mesh for testing ( import checkbox ) it doesn't have to be a skinned character to be dynamic

anyone know if theres a way to force mip level usage on a texture sample in the material editor?

I want to import a cube map that has various mip levels, using lowest for one material type and highest for another. Is there a way to pull from different mip levels within the material editor? It'd be really useful to save on texture calls..

ok guys i accidentally posted a thread about this but my question my get a faster response here

ok so i was wondering about something. i know with linear interpolate and material instance you can make a mesh switch between two different textures. is there a way to do the same thing with more, say about 5 different textures

Hello,

I am having issues with UV seams on a static mesh in Ued3. The object does not have a material applied, however all the UV seams are visible.

No split verts. All faces set to smooth group 1. No lightmap. No texture. One single map channel. No overlapping UV islands. Imported static mesh from max as ASE file.

In my search about uv seams in Ued some people talk about using a second map channel to cover UV seams. Although I dont see a detailed explanation on it, also it has to do with lightmaps and im not using any yet. Does anyone do use this second channel to cover seams? What is a common workflow for covering UV seams when working in Ued3?

Micro, you mean when you import your mesh and it puts the default checker matieral you see the seams? I think thats normal because it's just a tiled checker pattern. What happens when you create your texture and put it on?


Anyways, I have a general question:

When I open up UT maps from Epic to check out their props, I notice that pratically all their static meshes are fully enclosed. That is, they don't delete any faces that get hidden. Even when the other side doesn't have any modular use at all. I even see hidden sides mapped with junk images. Is there a specific reason for this?

alexk - i remember reading somewhere on the udn with way that culling (removing polys not seen from rendering) works in unreal engine 3 (each polygon culls all polys behind) works better with closed meshes. may also be other reasons but i'm pretty sure thats it. could be wrong though.

Hi !
I'm having some problems with one of my mesh, here is a screenshot to understand:



As you can see, everything looks fine in the Static Mesh Editor(Same in Maya), but in the UnrealEd viewport and in-game, some edges are looking like hard-edges for specular, just between both parts of the symmetry I made.

*There isn't any normal map yet.
*Vertex are correctly welded.
*UVs correctly welded.
*Edges hardness correctly set.
*Faces normals look right.



I don't know if there is a way to solve this problem... Anyone can help ?

Thanks !

Is there a way to select an object from a list comprised of all assets currently in the scene or level? Or, is there a way to change the size of the icons that represent these objects. I am finding that items like skylights way up high in a large level are near impossible to again find by manually looking for it.

or even a selection marquee would do, I know the general area of my assets even but I dont see a marquee selector either and lightbulbs get to be pretty small with 256 sized levels...

There's grouping and there's the binoculars up top. You can find by searching a string there. Also, name your objects. StaticMeshActorXXX drives some people mad.

@ ng.aniki- Select those faces and do Normals>Set to Face. The vert normals look wonky.

binoculars! woot! haha, im an idiot.

Originally Posted by Lamont

@ ng.aniki- Select those faces and do Normals>Set to Face. The vert normals look wonky.

Thanks ! I'll try that as soon as I get home

Change the size of the "Play from here" playback window? full screen playback? or is there a size restriction?

Originally Posted by Microneezia

Change the size of the "Play from here" playback window? full screen playback? or is there a size restriction?

you can hit the windows button and then click on the maximize window button if you want to go fullscreen.

Hey there Jesse Moody! how ingenious! thank you! I like your hack and slash method... or is that the official way lol...

Originally Posted by Microneezia

Change the size of the "Play from here" playback window? full screen playback? or is there a size restriction?

or you can hit ~ and type "setres 1024x768" without quotes. if you want to do it via command line Depending on what resolution you want anyways.

When I hit the tilde key my Reference Coordinate System goes from World to Local, No console or command line appears. this is of course not during playback. During playback nothing happens

Ok I got a quick question, I can't get my static meshes to shadow onto the terrain. I've played about and tried to look up info etc. but no luck so far.

Here's an example, I put it into an existing level and rebaked all the lighting but this is how it turned out still.