Shadows bugging, need help fast

[Kennett Ylitalo]

I've been trying everything but to no avail. Here's the screenshots:

See those lighter spots where the shadow suddenly disappear? The terrain is completely normal and the same all around, the spots have exactly the same materials. This is not the worst case, if i try to shift the sun position lower, they will become useless garbage and very unpredictable.. And they pop up unexpectedly all over the track, if i shift the time of the session. Since i have designed them to be a feature that affects the driving experience a lot, i wouldn't like to remove them or make the sun appear so high that they don't cast any shadows on track.

I've tried everything i could think of in the .gdb but can't figure this one out. The shadow objects are custom SObjects, shown here as red/grey:

There's an event planned for the next weekend so i would like to got help ASAP. I really don't want to remove one of the highlights of the track, it comes so bland and boring without the shadows.

 

[Erwin Greven]

No pics...

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

No pics...

They are there, try ctrl-F5 to clear the cache and reload.

EDIT: That is funny.. If i reload this page thru my proxy, pictures disappear but if put the picture link to address bar, they work just fine..... I'll try to reload them.

http://cream.galleria.fi/Temp/capture_2011-05-30_20-01-09.jpg
http://cream.galleria.fi/Temp/capture_2011-05-30_20-01-05.jpg
http://cream.galleria.fi/Temp/bug.jpg

And why can't i put the pictures as an attachment..

 

[Kyle Puttifer]

The first post works for me.

 

[mianiak]

I think it's because it is where the terrain parts join, at those edges there is no smoothing, so the game thinks it is a hard edge. The shadows generated by the game are usually on a mesh (I think it's the same foe rf, it is like that for other games(I can find this out for sure but not right now)) and because that edge is not smooth it's causing the shadow mesh to not curve with it.

Try using the merge and split function in the terrain tool to clean it up somewhat. make it so there are no sudden changes of angle where they join.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

I'll try that after solving the bigger problem.. Last night in the wee hours i managed to lose AIW completely... Lesson: don't do editing when your eyes can't stay awake.. I have a backup but for some strange reason the AIW from the backup does something weird, only thing that i could think of is that early on in the project i made a short strip of tarmac that is 1km below the track just to move the artificial horizon out of sight.. I raised that tarmac bit by 300m up to see has the overall elevation the problem with shadows . Now i think when combining the original track with the AIW from the backup, the backup AIW is ~300m below the track. Aarghh.

BTW, there was no edge on that terrain, it was smooth.. But still the problem got solved by making more polygons around that place and flattening the terrain by a fraction.

 

[Kyle Puttifer]

For better FPS, you could try putting a fake shadow texture on the road, but then this "shadow" won't have any effect on the car.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Kennett, sobjects/tree walls will not produce the effect you’re looking for.
Split merged objects into individuals, or tight groups. Reducing the area of the merged objects will solve your dilemma.

Thank you very much! This makes sense since the worst problems are with long shadow objects...

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Shortening the shadow SObjects (mostly) did the trick. There are some places that needs some terrain smoothening (or other trickery) but now the worst are gone.

EDIT: And now i saw what you ment, to split terrain.. lol, have seen that button but didn't know what it was for.. But shorter shadow objects behave much better than those kilometer longs..