Unreal Engine's Shadow Problem has a GENIUS NEW FIX

today we're going to fix this really annoying Shadow problem in Unreal Engine I've gathered together all of the best Solutions as well as one that fixes it in a single click basically this problem happens because these are all nanite meshes which means it's using unreal's virtualized polygon technology but it doesn't play well with Ray tracing and path tracing the Shadows are being cast by a fallback mesh which is the low poly version of the mesh if I switch to path tracing okay the shadow problem is gone but now all we can see is the fallback mesh you wouldn't want to use this in a cinematic so solution number one is a console command which will pretty much clear this up the command is r. rracing nan. mode one and yes the shadow problem is fixed in Ray tracing so if we switch to path tracing you can see we're using the full quality measures not the fullback measures it works job done but unfortunately this is a console command which means that every time you launch your project you're going to have to enter this I've got some more permanent Solutions coming up in the video let's move on to some solution number two which is another console command r. rracing do normal bias this will be Zero by default but we're going to set it to five and our shadow problem has cleared up again which is good but it's worth noting that normal bias shifts the Shadows from their original position so this result is just not accurate however if we switch to path Tracer we're back to the fullback mesh unfortunately so we've got our jaggy edges back let's move on to solution number three we're going to edit the nanite mesh so we're in the static mesh viewer and we're just going to go to the nanite settings on the right hand side in full Target if you just change that to relative error and then change the relative error from one to zero that should clear up most meshes now you can still see some Shadow on here which is not what we want so let's just change position Precision down to some fraction let's try 164th of a centimeter if you've got a B GPU this process might be quicker but for me every time I make a change unreal is quite slow yeah that's done it so that's cleared up the shadow here let's go look at our scene this result looks very similar similar to the ray tracing nanite mode console command but this one just happens to be permanent a bonus tip the eagley among you may have noticed that I haven't solved all the problems with my meshes right here these fourr Mega scans look fine but this Rocky outcrop in the middle distance has got dark triangles all over it I've just jumped into the static mesh viewer so you can get a better look at this and it's much more apparent here what's going on you can see those dark triangles so to fix it go to your console and type in this command r. rracing do Shadows do enable two-sided geometry and just set that to zero and watch all of those triangles disappear let's check this out in the scene yep there it is it's completely fixed it's been bugging me for so long I just had to tell you guys so let's take a look at solution number four so my friend Sam Eisenhower from boundless entertainment has developed two plugins that solve this problem with a single click one's called path Tracer Pro and the other is called light Forge why two plugins though well the answer will become clear in just a moment I've already added it to my engine so I just need to go to plugins and search for path Tracer Pro enable that and light Forge so I've restarted the engine and path Tracer pro has added its logo to the viewport right here now by clicking it what it would do is ask me if I want to optimize the scene for R tracing and path tracing we're going to do that in just a moment now we've already gone into one of our measures and changed the fallback error to zero path Tracer Pro would go through every single mesh in your scene and do that to do that normally this is what you have to do so I'm just going to select Mega scans folder cuz my mega scans are the only nanite meshes in my scene filter that by Static mesh I'm going to select all of those then I'm going to right click and select asset actions edit selection and property Matrix there's a list of all of the Mega scan in my scene so we can select all of those and then go over to the right hand side where there is nanite settings which will look familiar by this point in here we've got the relative error and we're going to set that to zero and and we'll let rreal do that and it's done of course the Shadows are cleaned up but we do still need to save right okay let's see how different it is doing it with path Tracer Pro click on the logo and optimize all 75 Nite meshes for raate tracing and path tracing yes it's preparing static meshes give it a second and that's done of course the shadow problem is gone but it took so much less time it saves us a ton of clicks and a ton of waiting around but what about the other one light Forge so if I go to my window and open light Forge it opens its own UI now this is a separate plugin to path Tracer Pro but it comes with a lot more features it still has that ability to remove the shadow problem which is good but you also have the ability to enable or disable path tracing in your project from one checkbox you can also select your post process volume and it will show you all of your path Tracer and Lumen settings at a glance which kind of saves you from searching through the details panel even more so it's got the ability to optimize Lumen and path Tracer from a single button I quite like to dial mine in very specifically but this I think gives me a nice starting point for good quality Lumen settings oh and nanite mode and two-sided geometry console commands can be activated through light Forge and they will stay active even if you've closed your project so so that's a pretty cool tool that will save a little bit of time and maybe a little bit of brain power as well which is always good now I spoke to Sam about these plugins and he says because path Tracer Pro is the older of the two he's now going to be giving that away for free I've linked to both in the description box below so if you just want to try out path Tracer Pro and the ability to optimize nanite meshes you can get that now for nothing but light Forge with all those extra features can also be gotten with the code Joshua Mur for 20% off and Sam's giving me some good news for those who already own path Tracer Pro if that's one of you then you are getting a free upgrade to light Forge now if you want to see the Cinematic that I created in this project I'm linking it right here so you can head over and I'll see you there

Channel: Joshua M Kerr

Views: 6,205

Keywords: unreal engine 5, unreal engine 5.3, unreal engine shadows, nanite shadows, nanite shadow issue, unreal engine nanite shadow, unreal engine path tracing, unreal engine ray tracing, lumen hardware ray tracing, raytracing, pathtracer pro, lightforge, unreal engine render, unreal engine movie render queue, pathtracer, unreal engine path tracer, unreal engine 5 path tracer, unreal engine 5 cinematic, unreal engine, unreal engine for filmmaking, ray tracing, path tracing

Id: 4NCGiE1IK5k

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 13 2023