Borderlands 2 player shadow

[ChaosDuck]

This probably isn't the best place to ask, but as I've found absolutely nothing anywhere else, I'm going to try my luck here. You guys do know a lot about the technicalities behind it, after all.

So, in Borderlands 2 the player doesn't cast a shadow in first person. I don't like that. Any way to change that, or am I going to just eat my extreme desire for graphical features and live with it?
Thanks for your time, and I hope I don't enrage any moderators by making this topic.

[Thomasmul10]

I've never played Borderlands 2 (yet... =D), but there will be no way to change the player shadow I'm afraid. If you're playing on PC you may be able to boost the shadows up to max settings and see if it helps, but I doubt it will. This is because many games don't include a full model of the character that you are playing as. Let me explain...

As far as I'm aware, Borderlands is strictly a first person game. So you, the player, will never get to see your players body and certain other body features, as you're always looking at your characters arms and weapons. So because you're always looking at your arms, the designers of the game tend not to model your characters body, legs, and head, as you'll never see them in game. They just model a set of arms and place a camera behind them, to give the illusion that you are playing from the character's prospective. Doing things this way just makes thing easier, and is slightly more beneficial performance wise.

Oh, and obviously, other players don't just see a set of arms when they look at you. They see a full character that has less detail in the arms, and different animation sets. Doing things this way just makes things easier really. =)

[ChaosDuck]

Thanks for the response.

The thing is, the developers DID take time to model the player from a third person view - a lot of varieties, in fact. There's a lot of customization going on in this game, and you do see your player in thid person when you enter the inventory/map/other menus. Also when you drive a vehicle.

I'm aware that no shadow is cast because no player model is actually rendered in first person, so let me rephrase my question - is it in any way possible to change the fact that there is no model to cast the shadow? There are two interesting lines in the config file WillowEngine.ini, that are both disabled by default, on the highest possible settings achievable by the in-game menu;

bEnableForegroundShadowsOnWorld=True
bEnableForegroundSelfShadowing=True

Unfortunately changing them to True instead of False didn't seem to do any visual change. So again, is it in any way possible to change the fact that there is no model to cast the shadow, since the model does actually exist, and is loaded in specific conditions.

Thanks again for your response.

[Thomasmul10]

Ah okay, sorry I didn't fully understand your question.

Those lines in the config file won't work because lines that say anything like 'World Shadows', or 'Self Shadows' won't do any good. Self shadows make sure that an object can cast shadows on itself, but you wouldn't see those shadows on the player. World shadows are the shadows seen by they player in the environment.

It all depends on how they have set up their camera and player systems. The model you see in 1st person may be different from the 3rd person model you see when the camera zooms. In this case, you may have to set the 3rd person model to cast shadows on the world, and have them made visible to the player in first person. Doing this probably wouldn't be as simple as changing a line in a .ini file unfortunately, although I'm not sure.

As you know, games have different ways of doing things like this so it's dificult to tell how exactly you would go about it. It would be easier if there where some sort of official mod tools available. =/ If the 1st and 3rd person player models are a unified single model then that would be easier, and would probably just require you to change a few options in a file.

I'm sorry I can't give you a better answer. My experience with this sort of stuff is pretty low. I'm an artist as heart so turning a shadow on is as simple as ticking a box for me, haha. Hopefully somebody else with more experiece can give you a better answer. For now, i'd just keep browsing various .ini files and search for key words such as 'Shadow', 'Player', or 'Character', and anything else you can think of.

[ChaosDuck]

Alright, I figured it couldn't be that simple. I asked Boris Vorontsov of ENB Series if it could be done. His respond that he believes it's possible;

If game have 3-rd person model and shadow at some moment and if it's known engine, i think it's possible.

but he won't do a specific version of the mod for Borderlands 2 just for this. Now I'm just hoping someone else knows of a way to mod this in. Thanks for your time, Thomasmul.

[Kelt'ar]

Just a question, do you have the borderlands source code?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalkpp