Shadows Fade Away/Disappear When You Move Away From Them

Good afternoon everybody. I was working on my game, but then noticed something weird going on with my shadows.

  • Near Part With Shadow:
  • Far Away From Part With Shadow:
    Screenshot 2022-09-17 181551
    The shadow get’s messed up when I move away from it. I’m using Shadow Map Lighting Technology and my Graphics Level is set to 15. I’ve tried changing the Graphic Level and the Lighting Technology. I’ve been searching on other DevForum Posts, but none of them fix my problem. Is there anyway I can fix this?
3 Likes

Have you tried to adjust the ShadowSoftness under Lighting?

Edit: Nvm, it stays focused on my studio test… hmmm… it might be a render issue, have you tried to restart studio?

Yes, I have tried restarting studio multiple times.

Pretty sure it’s because the further away items are in Roblox, the less defined they get to keep games running faster. If everything was super detailed all the time it’d get pretty hard on your system.
The same thing happens with Terrain the further you get away from it.
You can try using StreamingEnabled and changing the settings, but honestly it looks like your camera is 1000 studs away, so expect some diminished rendering.

3 Likes

When I turn on StreamingEnabled it gives me a ton of errors in the output.

You need to set your Graphics Level to the highest(21) to keep the shadows accurate. It still goes away if you’re too far from it.

I’ve tried setting the Graphics Level to 21 but the shadows still disappear and I’m trying to prevent the shadows from disappearing.

This is normal. Roblox studio automatically removes shadows when you are far away because for performance regulation. Since shadows use a lot of calculations and algorithms to determine the position and accuracy.

5 Likes

Then how do I make it not automatically remove shadows?

You can’t. All you can do is turn up your graphics.

That’s really disappointing. Clean shadows would make my game look really good. Thanks for letting me know.

you can use a plugin to “bake” in the lighting, how or what its officially called idk…
you could alternatively use a decal to fake a shadow.

I was searching roblox to find some plugins that could help, but none of them really focus on shadows. I also tried decals to make it look like shadows.

It is sadly just something that you can’t do anything about… On the bright side, (pun intended) it is completely normal. Try joining the game on the app
to see if it still happens.

Yes, It does still appear. Even when I use the app.

Yeah, I don’t think even a script can help it. Simply because it is a anti lag system.

Hi there!

There is a few things that may be going on:

  1. The graphics setting of your studio is lower than your graphic setting when in play mode, which can mess with your lighting and shadow rendering.
  2. This is roblox lighting doing its thing. There is a cutoff point where shadows stop rendering, and its a fairly short distance if you are creating large structures. This may also be impacting your shadows.
1 Like

This seems standard in any game engine, the further you move away, the less complicated things become due to the Level-Of-detail machine Roblox uses.

this is to optimize the shadows, pretty sure you cant “fix” that

The graphics setting of your studio is lower than your graphic setting when in play mode, which can mess with your lighting and shadow rendering.

How do I know if the studio graphics settings is lower than the graphics setting in play mode?