Shadows slightly too small

[Venerated1]

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#1NE321#1

Maybe this isn't even a bug but a setting that I'm too newb to figure out... but the shadow distorts pretty bad on smaller spheres.

When you make the sphere bigger, it look beautiful. Like this:  http://playground.babylonjs.com/#1NE321#2

Is this indeed a bug? Or, is this a setting that I can dynamically change? Or, is it just a limitation that I should just be patient on?

[Guest]

This is not a bug per se but more a settting issue

Please read this: http://doc.babylonjs.com/babylon101/shadows#troubleshooting

Shadows are quite complex to set up but we are trying hard to provide all kind of tools to help

In your case you can try to bring the light closer by playing with light.position. The closer the better

[Venerated1]

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#1NE321#4

So, I held back my frustration with the fact that distance didn't make any noticeable difference and dug through the troubleshooting guide.

SUCCESS!!!! But, I would strongly recommend an edit to the troubleshooting guide. 

Quote

Bias

You may want to reduce shadow acne resulting from not precise enough shadow map. To do so, you can define the bias (which is 0.00005 by default).:

shadowGenerator.bias = 0.01;

Shadow generators compare the depth of every pixel with the depth of occluders (shadow casters) seen from the light point of view. As we are dealing with low precision textures (when supported Babylon.js will use float textures but low end devices only support int textures), you may want to boost the depth of occluders to facilitate self shadowing (An object casting shadows on itself).

Possibly add this:

Quote

Bias can also sometimes shrink or distort a shadow. In these cases, reducing the bias can occasionally produce a better effect.

shadowGenerator.bias =0.000009;

I don't know why everything I'm writing is bold now... but you get the point. I'm just happy that I have a fix.

 

[Guest]

This makes sense

Do you want to edit it directly?

https://github.com/BabylonJS/Documentation/blob/master/content/babylon101/babylon101/Shadows.md

[Venerated1]

Change suggestion submitted, thanks.

[Venerated1]

I guess that it didn't really let me edit because I  "don’t have write access to." So, if you can give me access then I would gladly make that edit.

 

[Guest]

We have a doc for the doc