rujuro on 3/3/2005 at 04:13
I'm feeling pretty stupid, but I've brought in a number of custom meshes, and none of them cast shadows. I have added the castShadows property in the render section of the static mesh, but I get nothing. I placed an aristocrat mesh using the same process, and his boots cast shadows, but not the rest of him (an improvement, anyway). Any ideas? I've looked at other threads, but haven't seen the answer. Thanks!
deadman on 3/3/2005 at 05:46
Quote Posted by null
4) Static meshes, when placed in game, default to *not* cast a shadow. This is a very good thing, and will save you frame-rate. Once you've lit the space how you want it, then walk through it, and turn meshes that *must* cast a shadow on, one by one. Ignore the rest, as your players won't notice or care if some ugly sliver-shadow on a mostly-embedded wooden beam is missing. (you turn on mesh shadows by adding a property to the object, under the Render sub-head, as I recall.)
That help? Looking forward to seeing your work-in-progress,
rujuro :thumb:.
deadman.
rujuro on 3/3/2005 at 13:29
Thanks for the response, but actually, that's exactly what I did. To further clarify, these static meshes are EXTREMELY large. Does anyone know if there is some sort of size constraint on shadow casting static meshes? I ran some tests with the included meshes last night, and got odd results.
I placed the broken clock tower base and the large stone section did not cast shadows, while the small wood pieces that jut out did. The only other thing that I can think of is that there is something in the material settings, but if that's the case I can't find it.
Thanks, I hope someone has more ideas on this.
rujuro on 3/3/2005 at 14:25
Ah HA! figured it out, and this could be useful to those of you working with custom meshes.
You need to run an STL check on your object before you export, because while they will work if there are open edges (or double faces I assume), they WILL NOT cast shadows. The mesh apparently has to be completely closed for this feature to work.
