Animation seems to cause character model to stop casting shadow and have strange popping/flickering

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
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Hi everyone,
I hope someone can help with this strange issue.
I downloaded a character asset online that came with animations and I set it up just like my other characters. If I place the character mesh in the scene on it’s own then it casts shadows and doesn’t pop out if the camera gets close, but if I use an animation or an animation blueprint on it then it stops casting a shadow and it pops out if the camera gets close.
I think that this second one has something to do with LODs as it flickers at a distance too, but comparing relevant settings to other assets there is no difference.
The character mesh didnt have a collision seemingly either unlike others, which was strange but no a massive issue as it will get a capsule collision in a blueprint anyway.

Again, this only seems to happen when the anims are applied and I’m not sure what the relevant ways to change this are.
Any ideas or help will be appreciated. Thanks.

1 Like
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Update: After some messing around with lighting in the world in editor, it seems that it is more specifically an issue with LODs.
The model seems to cast shadows sometimes now, but it still has the LOD popping issue and that seems to make it stop casting shadows too.

I have no idea how to remedy this as it is just coming from the animations and not the model.

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Inside of your character Skeletal Mesh, under Asset Details, you will find information under the categories LOD Picker, and then the specified LOD, such as the case in the following image LOD2:

LOD_CastShadows
LOD_CastShadows376×537 38.5 KB

Can you check if any of the LODs have Cast Shadows disabled?

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Yeah it has cast shadows checked on the LOD on the character mesh.
When it doesn’t have the animations it is perfectly fine but there is something in the animations that is messing with it and I don’t know if there is a way to sort it out.