Player Character shadow is a complete mess

[PR2501]

- shadow has no hair
- often your shadow has no head at all
- shadow does not match the clothes you're wearing
- when moving, the arms of your shadow often become disconnected from your torso's shadow at the shoulders
- attack animations look extremely wonky on your shadow, with your limbs twisting wildly

I booted up Fallout 4 and was surprised how good the player shadow in that game from 2015 is. It shows your hair, clothes, animations. Pretty much anything I do movement wise is correctly cast as a shadow.

Why does an extremely janky game from 2015 have an infinitely better player shadow than Cyberpunk 2077?

Is there any way to improve player shadow on my end? That monstrosity scares me.

Post automatically merged: Jan 2, 2021

What are my arms even doing here? Left arm has split in two, right arm is angled up really weird.

 

[Miyado]

I think the devs need to give us option to turn off player shadows.

 

[FLyingMonkeyPaints]

I think the issue is that the game doesn't actually render a full body model for the player in first person. As a result, the render engine has to approximate a shadow based on what the player is doing, and whatever algorithm they are using is just awful. It's probably the same reason you can't see V in a mirror, there is just no full model to render in those circumstances.

This might also be the reason you sometimes get weird visual bugs like being inside another person's head; there's no collision taking place to prevent it because the camera free floats and is not really attached to any in-game object (e.g a body).

 

[reaper1]

I think the issue is that the game doesn't actually render a full body model for the player in first person. As a result, the render engine has to approximate a shadow based on what the player is doing, and whatever algorithm they are using is just awful. It's probably the same reason you can't see V in a mirror, there is just no full model to render in those circumstances.

This might also be the reason you sometimes get weird visual bugs like being inside another person's head; there's no collision taking place to prevent it because the camera free floats and is not really attached to any in-game object (e.g a body).

This is true of first person in Bethesda games, though. The player is an invisible floating camera at head height, with a pair of disembodied arms.

 

[Miyado]

how about the first person mode in mount and blade warband? I think they use actual model.

 

[hulkman2456]

What are my arms even doing here? Left arm has split in two, right arm is angled up really weird.

Basically the arms have no final animation setup. So it's just moved out of the way. The torso is animated when you look down. But the arms need to be pulled out of camera view. First person mode has its own arms. You'd see two sets of arms between the two perspectives. That's why many games don't draw the body below them. Overwatch does this. It's why certain animations don't match between first and 3rd person mode. Zarya hits you with her gun in 3rd person. First person has her punch and lower the gun.

 

[Warthog91]

Honestly they should have a talk with someone from ActiveBlizzard

 

[hulkman2456]

Honestly they should have a talk with someone from ActiveBlizzard

This was all done on purpose. They didn't want to animate 3rd person mode. Shadows are made from the character model. This is what you get. To make proper shadows, you have to make 3rd person mode. Regardless if you use it or not. V shouldn't be casting a shadow, period. Just like V doesn't reflect.

 

[mouser9169]

Fallout 4 was a third person perspective game.

When they realized they didn't have to finish the game they wanted, CDPR dropped all plans for TPP and switched to a first person only view, citing 'artistic vision' or some nonsense.

The reason the shadow looks hideous is because that what your character actually looks like in the world. They never finished modelling the character animations for the world - only for the inventory screen and the mirror.

 

[hulkman2456]

It's why I get frustrated with their "explanation". And when they are building a multiplayer version of CP. Guess what. All those animations they have to make for that. Are 3rd person mode. So the work will have to be done regardless for that offshoot. They can easily backport all the animations into 2077 and enable 3rd person mode. For non cut scene moments. This gets auto disabled when the game takes control of V's body. You'd have both options. But instead, they dropped it to be done later on.

 

[feckyer1ife]

can't deny the shadows when the player is running are hilarious. Idk how that got passed

 

[Spockprime]

Originally I thought the shadows were messed up, too. Then I saw the actual character "body" when the third-person mod came out. The shadow is basically showing you an accurate representation of what your character's body model looks like. It's a mess.

 

[LoubertTX]

Player shadow is awful. when swimming, I had four arms, two where floating near my head and the other two were attached to the character body. when ever I'm am holing a pistol the character shadow become really derpy and the arms are seeming not attached to the body. speaking from experience on the unreal engine, and I know that CD PR are using their own engine witch is great and everything, there are possible ways to Hide the janky first person asset shadows and just use third person animation shadows. If its emersion they want they need to address the issues with the shadow because it's always with you every step of the way and it's quite simply emersion breaking.

 

[TwoNeonEyes]

That previous big patch seemed to improve the shadow animations. I still thinks it's a bit jarring that your to character doesn't have hair, though. I hope they can eventually match the shadow what you're playing visually.

 

[NorseGraphics]

Originally I thought the shadows were messed up, too. Then I saw the actual character "body" when the third-person mod came out. The shadow is basically showing you an accurate representation of what your character's body model looks like. It's a mess.

Fortunately memories are fading of having seen the 'real body' of V in TPP. As far as I recall it's both hilarious and a nightmare to behold.

 

[serom_warez]

A year later ... Still no reflection of the character, completely buggy shadow.
Don't count on me on your next game!