Hi,
posted about this in rendering, but having dug deeper into it I think there seems to be a bug wherein meshes placed with the foliage tool (not matter how simple or complex they are, textured or not) lose their GI/shadowing in play preview. The very same meshes placed manually are lit and shadowed just fine.
Here’s an example (foliage tool on the left, manually placed on the right):
The fps gain experienced in play preview vs. in-editor confirms that it isn’t just a skylight colour setting (which was one of the few potential fixes I found whilst google).
In order for me to assist you with this issue, I need a bit more information.
Would you mind showing me how the lights in your scene are set up as well as the particular mesh you are using?
Also, the instance settings within the foliage tool for the specific mesh?
These will help me test this issue on my end to determine whether it is a bug or if you might be overlooking something. I would like to mention that since you are working on an unrealeased version of the engine, it is constantly under development support for these builds are limited due to its ever changing state.
