Shadow not showing with DirectionalLight

[pichou]

Hey everyone,

I am trying to add a basic shadow in scene with directionnalLight but it doesn't seem to work after all kind of tests.

I tried to get inspiration from other playgrounds : 
https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1KF7V1
https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#IIZ9UU

And I even went in the source code of this great example : 
https://www.babylonjs.com/demos/advancedshadows/

I create one that is not working and where I can't see the difference with other scenes : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#TWANP3 

It seems very basic but I just can't see the problem.

Thanks, Pichou

[GameMonetize]

Hey

This is not a bug. I moved your topic to the "Questions" subforum.

 

You forgot the give a position to the light:

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#TWANP3#2

[pichou]

Hey Deltakosh,

OK very basic indeed!

I have another question still linked to shadows. I have tested the worldmonger project to show a degraded ground but I can't manage to make the shadows working on this ground contrary to normal groundMaterial.
I saw that the worldmonger ground material use material effects and matrix to build the ground. Do you know if there is a way to had shadows to this system?

Thanks.

 

[GameMonetize]

There is a way but you will have to update the shaders. Is this what you want ?

[pichou]

You mean that I will have to manually update the shaders?

What I want exatly is the ground to receiveShadows like with a normal BABYLON.StandardMaterial but using the WORLDMONGER.GroundMaterial !  
 

I have read some of the effect doc used by worldmonger (https://doc.babylonjs.com/classes/3.0/effect), but if you know a simpler way, it would be awesome.

Bye, Pichou

[GameMonetize]

Yeah you will have to manually update the shaders...OR use the shadowOnlyMaterial on top of a clone of your ground:

http://doc.babylonjs.com/extensions/shadowonly

[pichou]

Cool, I will give it a try! Indeed I haven't thought to clone it. Clever idea! 

Thanks deltakosh

[pichou]

Hey Deltakosh,

It is working perfect with the shadow only extension.  Awesome!

Thanks for the tips!

[pichou]

I have an issue with the shadowOnly extension. When I use a particle system, the shadow goes in front of it (see attached image). 

Of course I haven't set receiveShadow = true on the partcles system, I guess this is not possible anyway

Do tou know where it could come from?

[GameMonetize]

Hello!

This is because the shadowOnlyMaterial is transparent so rendered after particles.

You can fix it by setting the renderGroupId of your particles to 1

[pichou]

OK,

The exact property was particle.renderingGroupId. 

By setting to 1, now the particles are in front of every other mesh, which I don't want, I want the particles to be in front of shadows only. Can I rendered shadow just before particles?

I tried different number of  renderingGroupId for both particles and shadowOnly to do that but it didn't work because it creates rendering conflicts with the other meshes.

[GameMonetize]

then in this case you can set everything BUT the ground with renderingGroupdId = 1. The ground will then be always rendered first

[pichou]

Hello again,

I tried to do that deltakosh but it didn't work. I think I a m stuck! :/
Let me explain, I have 4 layers : ground, shadow, mesh and particles. I need my particles to be behind everything except the shadow.

Let's assume these rendering number for these 3 layers : ground:1, shadow:2, particle:3
Then the shadow is in front of the ground and the particles in the front of the shadow : good. But the particles are also in front of the ground and are still shown even when they are under the ground which I don't want.

So I try these rendering number for each layer : ground:1, shadow:2, particle:1
Now the particles disappear behing the ground again. But as the shadow is rendering after, the particles are hidden from the shadow when I want them to be in front the shadow.

With every configuration I have an issue. I have made a playground to make the test easyer : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG
The renderingGroupId are at the end of the code.

Let me know if any of you have come up with something!
 

[GameMonetize]

what about this:

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#3

[pichou]

Nope!

The particles need to be not visible when behind the ground, like this : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#2
But in front of the shadow héhé.

[GameMonetize]

So you want the particles to be behind the ground or above? Can you rephrase your need?

[pichou]

Yes of course!

I need the scene to be exactly like that : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#2
Except that the particles must be in front of the shadow. 

[RaananW]

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#4 ?

 I wonder why you use the ShadownOnly material (there must be a good reason, maybe I missed it).

 

[pichou]

The reason is I am working with WORLDMONGER.GroundMaterial : https://github.com/BabylonJS/Website/blob/master/Scenes/WorldMonger/Shaders/Ground/groundMaterial.js

It allows me to build the ground as I want with multimaterial but this ground doesn't receive Shadow. So I have to use the shadowOnly extension as suggested by deltakosh.

[JonathanRev]

It would be great to have WORLDMONGER.GroundMaterial accepting the shadows of the meshes , i am also working on it , but shaders is quiet a bit far from my knowledge at this moment  , i will try to investigate it

[pichou]

Hey everybody,

I have the exact same problem with a material which use FresnelParameters. The mesh's material goes in front of particles when the mesh is actually behind it.

Maybe both shadowOnly and this problem are linked?

Here is a playground : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#5

Would be awesome to have a solution!!!!

 

[GameMonetize]

I do not think this is a problem of ShadowOnlyMaterial:

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#6

The problem comes from the ground which is transparent. So rendered AFTER the particles.

you can play with the renderingGroupId:

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#7

[pichou]

OK I would rather say even with the classic shadowGenerator we have the same problem!

See without the fresnelParameter we have the expected behavior : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#8
Particles are in front of the ground but are not visible when they get behind the groud : logic!

But in your playground the particles are always visible even when they get behind the ground : https://playground.babylonjs.com/#WEQHTG#7
And you can play with the renderingGrounpId but you won't get the expected behavior like in the first playground above.

Same issue I had with shadowOnly.

So I am not saying the problem comes from shadowOnly but as the problem also appear with fresnelParameter, maybe there is a link that could help you resolve this!

Cheers, Pichou

[GameMonetize]

The problem comes from transparency only actually. You can even remove the fresnel completely as long as you keep the alpha mode (like just set alpha = 0.5)

[Dad72]

I did it once with worlmonger so he could receive light, fog, ambiant color and shadows and others. what i had done was to merge the worldmongerMaterial with the standardMaterial and merge the worldmonger shader and standardMateriel shader.

It was a lot of work, but I ended up succeeding. but with the babylon changes that ended up no longer working because the architecture of the shaders has changed a lot, so i stop using worldmonder and is creating my terrain editor using customMateriel. 

My terrain editor can receive mountain, slope/ramps, hole ... and up to Paint 8 different textures (more than worlmonger )

See : https://bitbucket.org/JSbabylon/terraineditor