Mass Effect 3 Very annoying dark shadows.

[NCRSoleSurvivor]

Hi, I'm having a problem that is apparently well known in the ME3 PC community, which is the very annoying dark shadows.

 

The darkness of the shadows is unreal as they make an annoying appearance in cutscenes and sometimes go over characters faces that you can barely see them, they even appear in unnecessary places on the character, hell they even appear when the area I'm in is brightened up with lights. Disabling Dynamic Shadows doesn't fix the issue whatsoever. I've looked it up and see that a lot of people suffer through the same issue and apparently there is no fix other then to disable the Depth of Field in the gamersettings.ini file. While that does (sort of) fix the issue, it removes the lighting and shading effects as well as some motion blur and most importantly the depth of field itself which makes the game have poor quality and it will practically ruin the effect of a beautiful environment in the game, so I can't really go for that option.

 

If anyone knows a better solution to this such as turning down the opacity of shadows or something like that or even knows a mod that can edit the shadows to be better then please inform me and I'll appreciate it.

Thanks for taking the time read this.

Edited September 30, 2020 by NCRSoleSurvivor

[Tarshana]

What video card do you run? There are a few ini tweaks I can help with if you can send me that info :)

[rubydorje]

NVIDIA's Geforce Experience can optimise ME3 thus the shadows (I know of) disappear... at least that happend to me...

Cannot do anything with ME2 though...

[NCRSoleSurvivor]

By video card do you mean graphics card? If so I run on the AMD Radeon R9 380 Series.

[UhuruNUru]

Appears to be a Coalesed.bin Ini setting issue.

The A Lot Of Textures mod has some recommended settings, which causes this issus.

It's not the obviously named shadow specific ones, but is not present using the default ssttings.

May be AMD card specific, I have HD 7950 (=R9 280), which I think, is the same chip generation as yours.
Something in those settings is setting this off.

Not sure if Documents Ini's override coalesed.bin, in this case, but one or more of those edits triggers the problem for me.

 

Update

 

It's a LOD issue, not a shadows one.

 

With Vanilla LOD settings it is not present, and it affects ME2 as well.

 

Just used this tool to install the ME2 A Lot Of Textures mod

MEM - Mass Effect Modder - Wiki

 

MEM - Mass Effect Modder - Stable 1.22 Release

 

This is the best Mass Effect Texture Installer yet, for Example the A Lot Of Textures for ME2 package (1000 Textures approx) takes several hours, using ME3Explorer, but about 15 minutes, at most using MEM.

It's that much better, and once the MEM pack is created, it's even quicker to reinstall.

 

It makes the LOD files for you in

..\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect 2\BIOGame\Config\GamerSettings.ini

 

Specifically adding these lines

[SystemSettings]
TEXTUREGROUP_LightAndShadowMap=(MinLODSize=1024,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_RenderTarget=(MinLODSize=2048,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_64=(MinLODSize=128,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_128=(MinLODSize=256,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_256=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_512=(MinLODSize=1024,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_1024=(MinLODSize=2048,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_VFX_64=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_VFX_128=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_VFX_256=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_VFX_512=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_VFX_1024=(MinLODSize=32,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)
TEXTUREGROUP_APL_128=(MinLODSize=256,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_APL_256=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_APL_512=(MinLODSize=1024,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_APL_1024=(MinLODSize=2048,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_UI=(MinLODSize=64,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Promotional=(MinLODSize=256,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_1024=(MinLODSize=2048,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Diff=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Norm=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)
TEXTUREGROUP_Character_Spec=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)

With the lines, I get this issue, without them it's gone, and I've narrowed it down to a single line.

TEXTUREGROUP_APL_512=(MinLODSize=1024,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=-1)

Without the line, the problem is gone, with it it exsts, even if I change the values for other numbers, that work with the other APL lines.

I suspect it's a specific 512 APL texture, that we always are stood on, as the issue moves with the player.

 

I'll try playing without the setting, and see how it looks, as my testing has used the closed laptop on the main menu, as my guide, which is full blacked out when issue is present.

The issue needs full testing to confirm this solution, works in all the game.

[baylqn]

Someone help me. I'm having the same problem with the shadows. It's really annoying

[ArJed]

ME3 Graphics tweaks

https://www.nexusmod...ect3/mods/552/?

DynamicShadows=True

LightEnvironmentShadows=True

MinShadowResolution=64

MaxShadowResolution=4096

ShadowFilterRadius=3.5

ShadowFilterQualityBias=4

shadowdepthbias=0.006000

[Edit] Dynamic shadows completely fixed:

[systemSettings]

ShadowFilterQualityBias=4

ShadowFilterRadius=0.01000

shadowdepthbias=0.210000

Edited September 9, 2018 by ArJed

[Hakesz]

If someone facing with the shadow bug for me it was with the "A Lot of Textures". Deleting these lines should fix it completly (i faced this issue on the Normandy)

 

TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_64=(MinLODSize=128,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)

TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_128=(MinLODSize=256,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)

TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_256=(MinLODSize=512,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)

TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_512=(MinLODSize=1024,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)

TEXTUREGROUP_Environment_1024=(MinLODSize=2048,MaxLODSize=4096,LODBias=0)

Edited December 15, 2017 by Hakesz

[Horseradishy]

The ME3 graphics tweaks link listed above by Arjed works for me, but there is one annoying thing that remains:

 

A constant shadow that is around Shepherd, and follows...or rather is under and around him wherever Shep goes.

 

I tried turning off all the shadow settings in the gamer settings.ini file, but it didn't fix the problem...

 

Edit: Turning off BackOff and BoPatches cleared up the shadow problem, though the root of the problem may have been my order of installation and not the mod.

Now dealing with the game freezing sometimes when I confirm my loadout.

Edited February 1, 2018 by Horseradishy