UT3 Dynamic light problem

[mickyg]

Hi All

I'm learning the Unreal Editor and am following the tutorials found at Waylon-Art.com. I am up to the part where you insert lights into the scene, however when I do so the scene stays black.

By the looks of the tutorial, I should be able to drag the light around and have it dynamically light the scene, however for me the only time the scene is affected is when I drag the light outside the room, and it gives me weird artifact lighting like the attached image.

When I bake the lighting it's fine, and unlit mode shows textures fine, but dynamic lights just don't seem to work.

I have an ATI 4870, btw. Is there any issues with ATI cards?

Thanks

[mickyg]

Hi

It turns out the problem exists when I try to have dynamic shadows. Apparently my system doesn't like the dynamic stencil shadows. If I disable shadows the lights work fine.

Does anyone use dynamic shadows in their workflow? Am I missing out on anything by not being able to use them?

Thanks

[Pankake]

They do give you a good preview of what the static shadows will look like, you may find it dificult to get shadow directions and falloffs correct without them. How's your system? Is it able to play most of the latest games, etc? If so you may just need to update your drivers, get the updates for Unreal and Unreal Ed, etc.

[mickyg]

Hi Pankake

That's what I was afraid of.

My system is as follows:

Q6600
ATI 4870 1gb
8gb RAM

I have all the latest video card drivers and purchased Unreal through Steam. It performed an update last night, so I assume everything is current?

All games run at full detail, no problems. The strange thing is that the shadows work fine when previewing static meshes (in the window that pops up when you double click a mesh in the browser).

This sucks. I really wanted to take the next step and put my work into an engine, I hope I can resolve this.

[myles]

Sorry to bring up old posts,
Just to say I have the exact same problem on the same card, and it really sucks. I have similar computer specs as yourself, And I have no problems actually running the game, i didn't have the same problem with older cards.

I'm going to try older drivers, but so far no fix.

[Pankake]

You patched up your UT3 to the latest? (patch 2.1 I think).

[hubbu]

I don't have any technical info about this display error but, from what I have heard and experienced, UT dynamic lights don't play nice with ATI cards. I have a gimpy X1600 Radeon that displays distorted dynamic lights too. I tried using my girlfriend's computer with a 3850 HD Radeon with no success. Some of my friends have told me about the same ATI/UT issue from other various people.

[chris89]

I have the same problem, Have had it on an ATI x1950 pro and now on my 4870 X2 2gigs card. Kinda... shitty.

Latest drivers, latest unreal, it has been a problem spanning over 2 years now with different cards. The shadows just go haywire with them tripping all over the place, it only works at some distances with some light radii.

[Skamberin]

It is a issue with ATI cards. I have the same issue myself, got two 3870's. Never seen the issue with Nvidia cards.
Then again I heard that Nvidia and ATI GPU's have different ways of handling dynamic shadows, and seeing how Unreal has that "the way it's mean to be played" sticker all over it I guess the unreal engine favors and works properly with Nvidia.
Kind of sucks to be honest.

[chris89]

it does kinda suck ah well nothing to do but wait i guess.

I found a fix for it on my X1950 pro, and that is enforcing Anti Aliasing. Even though the Unreal Engine doesn't support it for DX9 cards, it still fixed the shadow problem. Weirdest thing i've seen in a while.
For the 4870X2 this didn't work, though i've read that the AA enforcing in the driver doesnt work properly anymore.