[General] Glitchy shadow –*Is there a way to fix this problem?

[Kazeon]

Can I fix this problem (look at the shadow)? How?

 

[Dr Super Good]

The problem is caused by incorrect shadow map not matching the virtual environment.

Two ways.
1. Recalculate shadow map and save. This is in the same menu as normal save. The shadow map should now reflect the environment more accurately although it can still look ugly at times.
2. Remove the shadow map from the map. This is done by deleting it from the map mpq archive (maps are mpq archives so any mpq archive tool such as the recommended MPQEDIT will open them). If WE errors when loading the map after removing the shadow map you can always substitute it with a blank one from a fresh map of the same dimensions.

The shadow map file is "war3map.shd".

 

[Kazeon]

This is my second attempt. It results better but still glitched in some places.

Is there a way to reduce the failing chance? The problem is that it took me more than 30 minutes just to generate shadow with only ~400 doodads, the map size is 512x512 though :/

 

[Dr Super Good]

Is there a way to reduce the failing chance?

There is not. The technology was very primitive and resource intensive at the time. It tried to add some kind of realistic shadow but as you can see it fails to do so a lot of the time. Custom models are often a source of the error since they were never designed with the purpose of calculating shadow maps in mind. For example bill boarded textures may look good for leaves but will cast no shadow if I recall.

the map size is 512x512 though

WC3 does not directly support maps of that size. As such excessive computation time is to be expected. However it could also be your system specifications and load (not enough memory will also result in very bad performance).

My suggestion is either use shadow maps and accept the generated results or leave them blank. Leaving blank has the added advantage of smaller map size so is not to be underestimated.

You could also hand paint your shadow map. The shadow map is nothing more than a simply encoded image where each byte represents a pixel on the map. If WE was no so useless you would be able to do it inside the editor.