Sun shadow distance increase?

[Shirk]

Ive noticed that there is a really small render distance for the shadows produced by the sun. Is there any way to increase this?

[Rick]

These shadows depend in the "suns" angle. Just like in the real world. If it's noon the shadows aren't long. Later in the evening the shadows get longer because the sun is at a steeper angle. Select the directional light, and play around with rotating it using the rotation buttons on the toolbar.

[Shirk]

Im talking about how you can visually see the shadows ending and not rendering anymore, leaving a lit portion.

[Tim Shea]

The last properties tab in the editor when you select a lamp is called "Light" and includes a range property. Increase the second value of the range property.

[Shirk]

The range setting for a directional light doesn't do anything.

[Tim Shea]

Hmm, I tried playing with the view distance setting and I think I broke something, because now my shadows fade out when the camera moves away from them, regardless of what value I choose.

[gamecreator]

Try playing with the camera settings, especially the ranges

http://www.leadwerks.com/werkspace/page/documentation/_/command-reference/camera/

Though it might be a light thing

[Shirk]

Hmm, I tried playing with the view distance setting and I think I broke something, because now my shadows fade out when the camera moves away from them, regardless of what value I choose.

That's exactly my problem. I don't recall it not being like that though.

 

[Rastar]

Sorry for necroing an old thread, but... has this been solved/answered? The range setting on the lights tab doesn't do anything (and by the way, if you close and reopen Leadwerks, that range is set back to -150/150, even if I save my map before closing). Also, I actually don't understand what those values mean, especially the first one - is that the range of objects behind the camera that cast shadows?

[YouGroove]

I'seen that a bunch of time ago, it's some internal setting that is fixed and not adjustable.

On big games like Skyrim, there is also a shadow distance maximum to avoid performance issues.

[Rastar]

Well, those shadows fade out when I move some 20 units or so away - that's a pretty short range for an (inifinite) directional light... it definitely has to go further, and it has to be adjustable.

[elcoo]

It's been almost a year since this issue has been reported now. Can we have an update on it?

[shadmar]

This might help :

 

In editor (for when editing only)

Tools->Options->Video->Lightning Quality (High)

 

In game (no.. menu setting isn't inherited by game running):

self.world=World:GetCurrent()

self.world:SetLightQuality(2)

[elcoo]

Unfortunately it doesn't help too much. When developing a game that uses larger worlds (For example: a Flight simulator/Spacesim etc.) than usual indoor scenarios, you will have to see shadows from much farther away. Of course one could simply scale the world down by factor 0.1 or 0.01, but this will result in a loss of precision.

So what we need is a option to scale the shadow casting distance. I know this will result in more blurry shadows, but that doesn't matter, as you wouldn't be as close to the shadows as in a FPS.

[Olby]

Agree, when I just got LE I tried to make a Manhattan style level. With directional lightning the shadows from the skyscrapers naturally are quite long and abruptly end in the near distance. This is very unfortunate since it breaks the atmosphere - the world becomes full bright as soon as the shadows are cut.

[marchingcubes]

This is a problem for me too, with my 'outside' levels - i'm currently experimenting with tree construction and placement, and the shadow falloff distance is far too short for my purposes. in the two shots below, as i approach my trees, the shadows arent at all visibile until i am practically right next to them.

 

 

[marchingcubes]

ok, setting lightquality to 2 in App.lua pretty much fixes it in my case (I had it set to 0 for some reason)