How to fix shadow terminator artifacts?

Asked Aug 05 '20 at 15:11

Active Aug 05 '20 at 17:16

Viewed 929 times

I am having issues with my scene. I created a sand dune sort of mesh and everything is all good. I add in an HDRI and then get this:

As you can see, the sand has some sort of weird shading issue which I believe is called "shadow terminator artifacts". I've only seen three solutions:

Up the mesh density (didnt' work, even with my high poly 1mil mesh i got these artifacts)
use the shadow terminator removal tool in blender 2.9 (Also didn't work, the shadows became too large)
Disable smooth shading. (Did absolutely nothing)

I honestly am confused and have no idea how to fix this. The scene is literally just an HDRI rotated around slightly.

One thing i will note, is that the shading issue goes away when i have a more diffuse HDRI (or none at all)

And here is everything in the viewport:

I also have tried switching out the HDRI for something else and still got the artifacts. What else can I try?

EDIT: forgot to mention, I don't get this issue when I render with EEVEE.

edited Aug 05 '20 at 17:16

asked Aug 05 '20 at 15:11

cgperfect

try to change the size of your light, if it's a sun and if you are in Cycles it is called Angle – moonboots Aug 05 '20 at 15:30
@moonboots I'm not using any lamps, just an HDRI. – cgperfect Aug 05 '20 at 17:15
so maybe add a light in order to smooth the shadows? – moonboots Aug 05 '20 at 17:22
@moonboots doesn't seem to work really – cgperfect Aug 05 '20 at 18:15
could you please pack your images and share your file (only the terrain)? https://blend-exchange.giantcowfilms.com/ – moonboots Aug 05 '20 at 18:28
@moonboots File size seems to be too large, can't. One thing I do notice is that the issue goes away if i remove the displacement map.. – cgperfect Aug 05 '20 at 21:17
are you using an image texture for this displacement map? in that case maybe check if it is set to non-color data, olso I think it is supposed to be 32 bit float, and of course the node organisation must be correct – moonboots Aug 05 '20 at 21:26
@moonboots yeah im using this: https://www.textures.com/download/3dscans0014/126018.. Setup is normal i believe and everything in regards to displacement is set to non-color data. – cgperfect Aug 05 '20 at 22:00
Oh also I have tried using a different texture and still got issues – cgperfect Aug 05 '20 at 22:09
try to share on another platform – moonboots Aug 06 '20 at 04:18

How to fix shadow terminator artifacts?

0 Answers0