Shadows stop working when using a skybox

Questions
1

Hello,
I finally got some shadows working in my scene. But when I activate a skybox using the following code, the shadows disappear.

var skybox = BABYLON.MeshBuilder.CreateBox("skyBox", {size:500}, scene);
var skyboxMaterial = new BABYLON.StandardMaterial("skyBox", scene);
skyboxMaterial.backFaceCulling = false;
skyboxMaterial.reflectionTexture = skyTexture;
skyboxMaterial.reflectionTexture.coordinatesMode = BABYLON.Texture.SKYBOX_MODE;
skyboxMaterial.diffuseColor = new BABYLON.Color3(0, 0, 0);
skyboxMaterial.specularColor = new BABYLON.Color3(0, 0, 0);
skybox.material = skyboxMaterial;

What should I consider regarding this?

2

Check your light’s position, it need to be inside the skybox, as skybox will block the light.

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#IFYDRS#876

3

i checked it and the size is large enough. but it became even weirder. i added this skybox.setEnabled(false); for testing purposes and the shadows still disappear. no, they don’t disappear, but they point to another direction and seem to not use the actual geometry.

here is a screen shot. top without the skybox code, bottom with skybox.

image
image490×556 79.2 KB

4

It seems skybox is added to your shadow generator after creating. As skybox is big enough, stuffs is too small to have one pixel on shadow map. Check line 54

https://playground.babylonjs.com/#IFYDRS#877

5

but in your example the skybox is added to the shadowcasters and i did even tried using removeShadowCaster and it still happens.

6

We need a repro in the playground in order to help you troubleshoot

7

hm, when creating the playground, it works. now i am even more confused.

is it possible that it has something to do with the glb i am using (exported from blender)? importing it into the playground from our server space didn’t work. so i cannot test it.

the only other difference between the playground and my scene was that i used some other hdr files i found on hdrihaven.

8

You can try this for your assets Babylon.js docs