Shadow problems

Hi.  I'm steadily getting better and have had several losses which have resulted in total resumptions - but each time I've felt a little more secure in what I was doing - progress, I think.  However, a couple of things persistently trouble me and I wonder if anyone could cast some light:

1.  I am having problems with what seems to be a shadow when I go close to the terrain.  I feel that it might be a shadow from the directional light but I don't know what to do about it;

2. In the upper right corner of my #Scene Screen I have a large red 'X' inside a grey box.  I don't know what this means but it doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that represents good news.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

1. I have the same thing, not sure what it is, just a weird unity thing I think

2. Same again, not sure what it means but has caused no issues for me thus far.

1. That is a Unity redraw issue. Pick an object in the scene or pick a terrain tool which will show the blue circle and hit the "F" key. It might zoom you out a smidge but then you can zoom right into terrain without issue. Typical recommendation is using right mouse and using ASWD to move versus scroll wheel. Hold Shift to move faster.

2. The big "X" simply turns Course Forge editing off. It's not there when Course Forge is not on. I never really have a need to use it.

Thanks very much for the rapid responses guys.  Reassuring to know I'm :

1 Not alone with my queries

2 Not doing anything totally stupid.

I will plod on and continue to enjoy my exploration of this wonderful bit of kit.

Thank you to all of those involved in the production of this gem - the Dev team and all of the beta testers who have spent hours finding the glitches and getting them sorted so that we can come along and get involved on a, hopefully, not too rocky development road .

No problem. Only know the answers because someone helped me with these questions once as well. Only stupid thing you could do would be to accidentally delete the terrain and save before you can Undo it. One day you will be deleting a spline and accidentally delete the terrain. After that moment of panic, hit CTRL-Z and all will be good. Backup your terrain and save your scene regularly. I would need clarification on this but there is now a Backup Terrain under the Perfect Parallel item in Unity. This saves a .asset file which will keep your painting and plantings as well I believe. I also export the heightmap through the Cogwheel in the Terrain Inspector tab under Heightmap Export Raw. I save as 16 bit Windows,as I'm on a Windows machine. This step may be redundant if the .asset save does it as well. This way, if everything went blank one day you could reload the asset file and heightmap into a new scene and be back at it.

OP, your 1 could also be a) Z-fighting or Shadow Akne. It really would help us to help you if you could provide a screen capture of your issues.

That goes for all newbies out there: visuals, please!

 

a - Z-fighting. A mysterious Unity thing, nothing at all you can do about it. Annoying as heck, though.

b - Shadow Akne. Not making this one up, honestly. Also a Unity thing, quite often mistaken for Z-fighting. Make sure the two bias settings on your directional light are NOT at 0, slide them up a bit and see if the shadow goes away in your scene. Keep them as close to 0 as you can, though.

OP, your 1 could also be a) Z-fighting or Shadow Akne. It really would help us to help you if you could provide a screen capture of your issues.
That goes for all newbies out there: visuals, please!

a - Z-fighting. A mysterious Unity thing, nothing at all you can do about it. Annoying as heck, though.
b - Shadow Akne. Not making this one up, honestly. Also a Unity thing, quite often mistaken for Z-fighting. Make sure the two bias settings on your directional light are NOT at 0, slide them up a bit and see if the shadow goes away in your scene. Keep them as close to 0 as you can, though.

The K11 I've seen around here would never use an emoji/emoticon. Should would be worried Dogga has hacked the Kablammo login? Or is it possible he is being medicated against his will?

You know me almost too well, DPR...

Turns out that typing a "b" and a ")" next to each other is a keyboard shortcut for the monstrosity that crept into my post. I caught the lower one, but did not spot the upper one - they only manifest themselves after posting. Normally I would edit it away, but I must stand by this disgrace since it has been spotted, leaving me to assume the sorrowful duty of exculpating Dogga.

And yes, just to spice things up: Not using these abominations is incontrovertible proof of a sane and balanced mind and whoever uses emojiditot thingies or even thinks of adding LOL or other cretinous web-acronyms to his or her message is a complete and utter... (CENSORED). Nuff said, those compelled to publicly disagree, do comment on that in Off Topics, please.