Hi,
thanks for the repro steps. I started investigating the issue and found that a potential workaround for the specular issue is to connect a scalar parameter node to the anisotropy input and set it to e.g. 0.1 (based on this issue). However, this does not seem to solve the flattened normal map on the shadow side when the roughness increases. I’m still investigating that further and might file a bug report for it.
Can you please confirm if the proposed workaround for the specular issue works in your project?
Thanks,
Sam