Ugly Shadows

[Fewer]

Hi, I feel like I'm asking for help constantly so I hope y'all don't mind

I've put down some trees and under them are some VERY UGLY shadows. The trees are using the same properties as the ones found in sawmill, but as you can see from the screenshots, the way the shadows have generated is very different. Anyone got a fix?

Mine:

vs
Valve's (same properties)

As you can see, my trees are creating huge, ugly, pitch black shadows under the entire prop, while valve's are creating small, round, lighter shadows under each individual tree.

 

[Crowbar]

It's not just about the properties of the models, but also the settings the map is compiled with, specifically the settings you pass to vrad.exe. Have a thorough read of this article on Nodraw.net.

 

[iiboharz]

More specifically on what Crowbar said, by default shadows for models are generated based on their collision mesh (or even just the bounding box) because they're usually composed of much simpler shapes, which can result in really ugly, blobby shadows. The -staticproppolys command forces the compiler to use the actual mesh for shadows.

 

[Harritron]

Had a similar issue the other day. -staticproppolys and -staticproplighting should fix this, however, this will significantly increase your compile time. Save this until your last compile, but definitely visit nodraw.net as Crowbar suggested. There are also many other tutorials on there that may come in handy in the future.

 

[Lampenpam]

this will significantly increase your compile time. Save this until your last compile

in my experience it increases compile time by only 20-30%. I always leave it on, gives a better idea for the final compile. It only increases compile time massivly if you use a custom lights.rad to emit lights from textures with low lightmap scale.