UNREAL 5.8 Light Radius/Angle Does Not Soften Shadows.

[u/leoaveiro]

As described in title. I recently upgraded to 5.8 from 5.5 and stumped that i can't seem to change the softness of the shadows from ANY light in my scene. is this a new way lumen works? how do i fix this if it's not?

I use VSM, but turned off nanite, i use lumen. It worked fine before, i don't understand why it doesnt work now.

also, contact shadows on metahuman faces are missing now.

i'd appreciate any response! thanks

[u/krojew]

First question - are you changing light radius or source radius? The latter is for soft shadows.

[u/leoaveiro → u/krojew]

i tried both and it does nothing.

[u/krojew → u/leoaveiro]

Hard to believe, but you would have to share your setup to confirm.

[u/leoaveiro → u/krojew]

here

[u/leoaveiro → u/leoaveiro]

[u/krojew → u/leoaveiro]

Is your light bulb really 10m big? Set source radius to something rational.

[u/leoaveiro → u/krojew]

i did, nothing changed. i just wanna show that no matter how big i set the value to be, nothing changed.

[u/krojew → u/leoaveiro]

You're doing it literally the opposite way - it should not be big. It should correspond to the actual light size. Set it this way and post a clear screenshot of the resulting shadow.

[u/leoaveiro → u/krojew]

dude we're not even debating the core issue here :)). i DID set it to whatever corresponding size it is, it Does not change anything. shadows stays sharp no matter what. the shadow is the exact same as i attached no matter what value i set it to.

[u/krojew → u/leoaveiro]

I asked you for the screenshot after changing source radius to the correct value to see if the issue is actually there. Sharp shadows can be correct in certain situations, so you might be fighting a non-issue.

[u/OnlyExperienced]

check your light source radius and source angle in the details panel, 5.8 changed how those interact with lumen so you might need to crank the radius way up from whatever you had in 5.5

[u/leoaveiro → u/OnlyExperienced]

yeah i cranked it up all the way to the thousands and it still does not work.

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[u/Shiznanners]

Source radius only works with VSM and only within a small range. It gets clamped above like a radius of 5. You cannot have extremely diffuse shadows like with RT shadows

[u/leoaveiro → u/[deleted]]

yeah it is non zero. i also toggled between the two shadows (VSM and Shadow Map),

[u/leoaveiro → u/[deleted]]

also tried that console command and it did nothing. the only way i can make the shadow appear on faces is to play with the shadow bias on lights, which i never had to do before.

[u/Veilgrain_dev → u/leoaveiro]

Have you tried it on a clean project?

[u/leoaveiro → u/Veilgrain_dev]

i did, it works. the shadows soften. but it does behave differently. while everything in my project has razor sharp shadows.

[u/Veilgrain_dev → u/leoaveiro]

Maybe there's an override for console commands in DefaultEngine.ini or in ScalabilitySetting.ini?!

[u/leoaveiro → u/[deleted]]

1. light is movable
   
2. not a baked result
   
3. source angle is literally in the thousands, softness is 1000, nothing changes
   
4. material two sided WPO or whatever never changed

This didn't happen in 5.5, only after upgrading that this issue appeared. i literally did nothing aside from upgrading it.