Since the change to DX11 I have not been using the old method to generate underbody shadows with a undershadows.gmt. But I'm noticing something with vehicle shadows in both the standard RF2 and devmode. I'm finding there are two separate and distinct sets of shadows being projected onto the ground. The first is a dynamic shadow that follows the shape of the body of the vehicle and moves with the sun's position (these I know I can turn on and off in the gen file). And a second, static shadow that seems to be generated from the models that projects a fixed shadow directly down along the Z axis onto the ground. I assume dynamic shadow is for day and the static Z projected shadow for night. These shadows are different shades of black, is noticeable and distracting during the day. Will the Z axis projected shadow go away with a future update as night lighting improves? Can I turn off the static Z axis projected shadow so it's not creating a distracting double shadow during the day? I noticed night lighting had a big update with the 1121 build. Will the static Z axis projected shadow go away during the day in a future update? Thanks!
Nobody sees this???? Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. The red outline is the static shadow, the yellow is the dynamic one. The dynamic one I can turn off and on using the mesh shadow "attributes" in the gen file. The other static shadow that seems to be projected straight down in Z I don't seem to have any control over. Can I control that????
You used to have to do your own underbody shadow, and depending on shaders or settings it was sometimes causing some issues. In one of the build updates, possibly some years ago now, the game was made to produce it automatically and modders no longer need to. Without the underbody shadow the lighting doesn't look right, like the car isn't actually close to the road. I guess depending on the particular car and its ground clearance the shadow may be a bit too defined or dark, not sure what options there are there. With a bit more time some actual car modders might drop by and advise.
Right, the undershadows.gmt is not needed and I'm not using that anymore. It seems that a shadow is being auto generated and projected straight down along Z in the shape of the models. My question is can that be turned off? Or will it eventually go away as night lighting and lighting overall is improved? I have a mod where the body is raised up a bit higher and now I'm seeing two distinct sets of shadows that doesn't look right.
That's the underbody shadow that you used to have to do, and is now automatic. That means you can't turn it off, because you can't turn it on. See here: https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/latest-1109-build-updates.59017/ (if I'm not horribly mistaken, this is basically AO from the body. As I said, I don't know if it can somehow be adjusted for unusually high bodies that may make it not look right)
I don't think it is an ambient occlusion in itself, I tried it and when I turn off the shadows in the .gen it disappears, but I don't think the duplicate can be fixed.
@dazzer That's what I'm thinking. I've spent hours on this and I can't get the shadow that's projected straight down to go away. I was hoping I'd get an official response like "Yes, as we work on lighting we intend to base shadows entirely from ray tracing and ao and intend to stop using this 2nd shadow".... or "it will go away as we make adjustments to lighting etc etc. " I suppose for now I either can remove the shadowcaster from the mesh strings in the gen file (that will look weird of course) or just live with this distracting shadow.
