Some (most?) light souces seem to not cast any shadows at all and light halos aren't occluded even by walls or platforms, making everything look out of place... Here are examples at the East Empire Company warehouse.
fallout 4 no shadows mod
Even actors cast their proper shadows. Most of the shadows look right, definitely better than on the previous images. I did some reading and got that there's an ini line, iNumFocusShadow= that can't be set to a number higher than 4. Does that mean that in a cell with more than 4 light sources only 4 will cast shadows? How are they picked, at random? Why don't actors cast shadows in most situations? Can this be fixed?
I tried loading a small mine to mod for testing if it would be possible to make a lighting overhaul mod with shadows in mind. I use a combination of ELE+ELFX and a "tailored" RS that looks usually great - except that not enough attention was given to shadows and they make such a huge difference. The problem with my attempt so far is that the game uses multiple objects for light, it's like having lighting fixtures and light bulbs and I don't know what else. I just wanted to copy one light source as a new record and add the omnidirectional shadow flag, then copy the record that places that light source in the mine as override and reference the modified light source - but I still have some reading to do, apparently. Thanks for the articles, I'll read them.
Weird I can't believe the world in FNV casts 0 shadow, like not even from a single dynamic light (the sun). I understand why they would remove them from console versions to cut on GPU costs, but this is a baseline visual effect that is essential in most games, at least allow it in the Ultra settings for PC. I asked about this to my Technical Art Director today and he was perplexed as well. The only thing that casts shadows in this game are you and NPCs/creatures around you, using a separate lighting model to achieve this. Doesn't that end up being a useless feature when everything else looks out of place? The world as it is looks flat at lacks volume, dynamically cast shadows from the skybox would have been incredibly beneficial to the overall look of the game, given that the bar is set so low in the asset quality department as it is; or at least have some AO. I still can't figure out how to force Ambient Occlusion in FNV with the nvidia drivers. Oh well, the game is still fun and that's what counts I guess. It's just a shame, such a relatively simple and essential graphical feature would have helped bump up the visuals by a massive amount.
I don't believe I've ever seen world-cast shadows in a Gamebryo engine game (but I haven't played that many of them). The shadows in Oblivion were just a faked texture projection effect (but interestingly Bethesda said at one point they had real time shadow mapping for the trees but it was too intensive). I do enjoy a good universal shadow mapping system as titles such as Red Dead Redemption implement. Most games (virtually all games) don't really use the lighting model in shadowing these days. Sometimes the illusion is well made. That is you really wouldn't need dynamic lighting to have shadows.
Nah. No shadows in the world in Oblivion or Fallout 3. Why would there be in New Vegas? edit: wait I do seem to remember an ini tweak that allowed them in oblivion now that I think of it. But wow did it ever look awful. Want aweomse thick shadows? Play STALKER. In fact play STALKER regardless. At all times. Ever. Use the nvidia Inspector tool to force Fallout 3's ambient occlusion in NV or Oblivion. I used to use nHancer but the new drivers broke it and the devs don't care to update it.
" I don't believe I've ever seen world-cast shadows in a Gamebryo engine game (but I haven't played that many of them). The shadows in Oblivion were just a faked texture projection effect (but interestingly Bethesda said at one point they had real time shadow mapping for the trees but it was too intensive). I do enjoy a good universal shadow mapping system as titles such as Red Dead Redemption implement. Most games (virtually all games) don't really use the lighting model in shadowing these days. Sometimes the illusion is well made. That is you really wouldn't need dynamic lighting to have shadows. "
The engine is capable of it, but it was taken out prior to the release of Oblivion because it was supposedly too demanding at the time, so shadows were only enabled for NPCs and some objects but not the world as a whole. My guess is that it has never been re-enabled due to consoles being their primary target. Still, modders have enabled it in Oblivion so it's likely it could be enabled in the FO games too.
Everyone has two faces. That's not a parable, in The Witcher 3 it's literally true. Characters have a head that loads during dialogue scenes, which is high-res, capable of lip-flapping, and has high-res shadows, and a less impressive head they wear the rest of the time. This mod forces everyone to look their best all the time.
Filing once again to the department of "If your rig can handle it," More Shadows adds dynamic shadows to many in-game light sources. Torches on walls will cast their own shadow over the sconce below them, and large braziers in cities will throw all kinds of harsh angles across cobbled streets. Patrolling guards carrying torches will also cast shadows, but this can be a little wonky. If you run into problems, there's an alternate version that removes shadows from guards' torches.
Just like the More Shadows mod, except exactly not like that. The opposite, in fact. Most NPC vampires, being the unnatural creatures that they are, cast no shadows even though they walk in the sun! Chilling.
...I never had SUCH SERIOUS problem/issue with my shadows quality, like I do now. I have spend about a week (or more!) to solve this, but without luck. I followed every tutorial I found, everything I could dig out, but without luck. First, I simply deleted my ini files and re-created them via the launcher (by selecting the "Medium"). Then, I ran the BethINI tool and played with the settings. And after that, I made manually even more tweaks...
Skyrim Special Edition's shadow settings are insufficient to produce what you are desiring. You can only get the shadows you want reliably with original Skyrim. You cannot turn down the shadow filtering in Skyrim Special Edition, so the only way to increase the sharpness of the shadows is by increasing the shadow resolution, which tanks performance. For instance, you can increase the value of the shadow resolution to 16384, and the shadows will largely look the way you want, but there still will be the blurring you are seeing that makes it look like shadows are doubling. As for the constantly moving effect that shadows have outdoors, that is because the sun-shadow transitions have been "fixed" to move at direct speed, and since time passes by so fast in Skyrim, if you stop to look, you can see the shadows constantly moving. In original Skyrim, and earlier version of SSE, the sun-shadow transitions could be modified so that you would hardly notice, but that seems to have been "fixed" AKA broken.
After doing more testing on the INI files, I have found a setting that fixes the constantly moving shadow effect and re-enables the old form of controlling sun-shadow movement that we have been used to via the fSunShadowUpdateTime and fSunUpdateThreshold settings. It seems that setting bDisableShadowJumps under Display to 0 will return us to this former method, removing the constantly flickering method of shadows always in movement in relation to the sun. I think that this setting boils down to user preference than anything else.
bDisableShadowJumps toggles whether or not sun-shadow movement is controlled dynamically outdoors, resulting in constantly moving and potentially flickering shadows in relation to the movement of the sun as time passes. Disabling this will result in sun-shadow movement being dictated by the fSunShadowUpdateTime and fSunUpdateThreshold settings, as utilized previously in the non-Special edition version of the game.
fSunUpdateThreshold sets the time between sun-shadow transitions. A value of 0.05 is equal to 1 second, so a value of 1 equals 20 seconds. Increasing this also increases the distance the shadows will move during the transition. Setting this to 0 will cause the shadows to constantly be moving outdoors with the sun (not recommended). bDisableShadowJumps must be set to 0 for this to have any effect in Skyrim Special Edition.
Then again, what really boggles my mind is the shadowing in Fallout 3, or the lack of it. The only real-time shadows in the whole game are the ones cast by the characters, which was unacceptable even in 2008 the game was released. And not to mention there were such games as Crysis and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare been released a year earlier with full real-time cast shadows.
Modder Terso simply played around with the settings for how the game handles fog, the quality of shadows and the amount of grass, among other things, looking for the most FPS with the least loss in graphical fidelity.
Although it may not always seem like it, a game's lighting has a substantial effect when it comes to graphics. Things like shadows and reflections enhance the atmosphere in small, but significant ways. Vanilla Fallout: New Vegas is clearly lacking in this department. 2ff7e9595c
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