Today is officially the 2 year anniversary of the “4.2 - Sun, Poor Quality Shadow” bug report. Confirmed, of course. Marked as “known”, and since then left on the list of “nope, still known.”
https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/123011
Still broken in 5.2. Perhaps we’ll check again next year?
Yeah, expecting people to just stay on 4.1 with it being over two years without a fix is kinda wild. Looks like the last update was it being referenced… five months ago. Sigh.
It’s the same bug but it’s great how they compared each Sun vs Regular shadows and how it reacts to focal length :
https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/152860
I’m wondering if with the current raycast node it’s possible to emulate 4.2 contact shadows and add a layer of raytraced shadows on top of it.
That might not solve objects outside the frame, but in your example test that may improve the result.
From there I guess people who have that issue in their projects should bring awareness. If it’s seen as impacting a lot of people it’s likely to get higher priority …
When I finally bit the bullet earlier this year and replaced Windows 11 with Linux Mint Xcfe, I found it a little odd the software “app store” only let me download Blender 4.0 at the latest. I’m sure I could download the latest version of Blender from the actual website if I wanted to go the extra step, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise–I’m just using real time Eevee shadows and even contact shadows like nobody’s business and still getting super-fast renders in 4.0, just because out of laziness I was (kind of) forced to use an older version of Eevee and Blender, before this regression!
I do hope Blender Foundation finally makes an effort to sort this out, though–on one hand, it is SO nice for shadows to just work in the older Blender 4.0, on the other hand, I really miss convenient stuff from later versions like Eevee’s settings being simplified to a simple “Ray tracing” toggle–I have to manually mess around with settings like AO, Bloom and Screen-Space Reflections until then, trying my best to keep it a light (but noticeable) touch so it doesn’t look like those blinding games from 2007 that over-did it with the Bloom effects in particular. And I really, really miss the “Set Camera to View” option, rather than manually adjusting the positioning and rotation of the camera just to get a decent composition of my animation or even practice still render from the first frame.
I can live with those quirks of going back to an older version, though, over messing with simple shadows in Eevee Next, giving up, and trying my best with PS2-era-looking “blob shadows” instead (way more work and time than simply being forced again to manually adjust the camera all the time or finding the right AO settings).
Naturally, just using Cycles instead is not feasible for me as a hobbyist animator who makes zero dollars and pretty much only has weekends to even boot up Blender at all until I retire many, many years later, especially since I unfortunately no longer have an NVidia GPU in my current setup (I managed to get 32 GB RAM while I still could, at least). Maybe I should go back even further to Blender 3.6 so I can at least accelerate Cycle renders on my current Intel Iris Xe GPU before Blender removed that option, too?
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I personally noticed this as well just the other day while I was playing around with cloth physics. It is very noticeable on that kind of geometry where you get a lot of bent faces. I remember the jagged shadows being an issue back in 2.80 for low res geometry models which they fixed later, but the engine rework brought it all back in a worse form by affecting basically any object. What a pity.
Not necessarily , there are settings that can improve the shadows…
In the end it’s related to how shadow maps work, if you have a high definition map , and it covers only a small area you get very nice shadows.
But if it’s a huge area with close ups then the texture gets pixelated.
When it comes to sun shadows then you hit the actual bug here, which can give pixelated shadows with high focal length values.
I think on the overall the shadows in eevee next are better, but this issue is problematic indeed. From there, soft shadows works well and you can get sharp shadows with regular lamps and small coverage.
Like always with Eevee , it’s faster but the engine is less forgiving !
Just for the record - and I’m just saying this for others readers’ clarity, not at a snipe at you - the “high focal length” is a lens of +45mm.
So, it’s only “high” relative to something like between a fisheye and 35mm. In the real world of “not blender”, a 300mm lens is considered high. 75mm is not even remotely “high”.
I only point this out, because when it’s stated “related to high focal length values” - it can sound like we’re asking for shadows to work in the most extreme conditions. Which isn’t the case here. They aren’t working in the full range of a normal condition.
(And for whatever it’s worth, those same shadows look perfectly lovely with an ortho camera.)
Yes, thanks for pointing that out, I thought it was higher than 45mm !
Oh, thank goodness!
