It appears that in Unreal 4.16 one loses the ability to place movable light sources inside movable shadow-casting objects.
You can see this by comparing the placement of a movable spotlight in a movable cylinder in 4.15 vs 4.16 as shown in the image below:
4.15:
4.16:
You can clearly see that the dynamic spotlight is weirdly cut down to a really small radius in 4.16 now. It goes back to it’s old proper rendering if moved outside of the movable cylinder though.
This unfortunately, breaks lighting for many scenarios: In one example case of mine, I have a spotlight inside a (shadow-casting) flashlight mesh. Both are moveable. The flashlight can no longer shine light in my game (worked fine in 4.15).
I could of course disable shadow-casting from the flashlight mesh, but the lack of shadows is very noticeable when placed on a surface like a table or the floor.
I’m open to any suggestions for workarounds. It would also be nice to hear confirmation if this is indeed a bug, or just intended behavior, so that I’ll be able to figure out what to do about it for my game.
Thanks so much!