Why no Point light shadows ?

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

This have annoyed me alot lately, that Point lights don’t have any shadow ?
Then I talked to a friend about Unity, and he said that point lights in unity don’t have shadows either… so, is this just general in all game engines or… ?

2

Point lights only have ray traced shadows, not buffer shadows. hence these won’t work in the game engine.

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Screen Shot 2012-12-23 at 19.51.58.jpg430×724 51 KB

3

Game Engines like Cryengine 3, Unreal Engine 3 and Frostbite 2 do have point light shadows. The BGE does not because of what Richard said. Even tho, the Harmony branch team is working to get them working on the BGE.

4

That would require some extra scripts which would make it unstable and slower anyway. Point shadows are not in the harmony’s “blacklist” anymore

5

Each time I try implementing point light shadows, I seem to screw something up :stuck_out_tongue:

I would still like to get them working eventually, but right now I have other priorities. If someone is interested in the code I had from my previous attempts, I should still have a patch around somewhere. Just let me know and I can dig it up and send it to you.

6

I have an idea, so "Light " is a Particle Emitter and is a Dynamic paint brush no buffer or ray, the surfaces in game are “Canvas” and the paint data is used to map emission with nodes, help? this could be pretty convincing.

7

Hmm… pretty interesting concept, but does the dynamic paint really work in BGE O.o? Never thought of that xD

8

I am not sure, it would depend on he frame rate? if you can do it in bake as fast as it goes in…?