Contact Shadows are automatically enabled in all of the default UEFN Day Sequence Actors and are not able to be changed by developers. Contact shadows mess with landscape foliage, causing these unwanted shadows to appear. I want to achieve a softer look for my foliage, so this is a huge issue for me and for the creation of my art. We should be able to either turn this setting off or adjust the settings on it for all Day Sequence Actors, or give developers access to turn it off for all Day Sequence Actors.
Please select what you are reporting on:
Unreal Editor for Fortnite
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Assets
Steps to Reproduce
Have a Landscape Material with automatic foliage placed on it
Make sure to use a default/provided Day Sequence Actor from the World Settings tab
Make sure shadow scalability settings are set to High, Epic, or Cinematic
You will see contact shadows no matter what settings you put or change on your landscape grass.
Expected Result
I should be able to disable contact shadows for my landscape grass or turn them off for the entire project/todm.
Observed Result
Contact shadows appear on all my landscape grass, resulting in an ugly visual style that is unwanted.
This is caused by the UEFN Day Sequence Actors having “Contact Shadow Non Casting Intensity” set very high, which effectively forces everything to have shadows, even if they have them off.
They could probably fix this by letting us create child blueprints of the day sequence actors? (like thats ever going to happen) Or a setting in that device
This would be really really nice. We can edit some of the day sequence components via the device but not really to the extent that many of us would like. It’d be sick to be able to customize the day sequence properly without needing to make our own super jank ones using day sequences.
I don’t think it is ugly
I find it awesome detail and obviously more realistic (in real life grass does not magically is transparent to light haha). Also since it is on Epic+ detail settings, is fine since that graphic setting is already intendeed to be more detailed and performance-expensive…
I remember on chapter 2 and 1 asking my friends why grass did not casted shadows back them (specially with chapter 2 release where game visuals improved but grass did not got shadows), I considered a performance limitation back them or a bug/minimal priority visual feature (I remember comparing the grass with many other games talking about the shadows, will try to find my messages from back them. I also said the same thing for genshin impact grass due to lack of shadows)
Imo I find it a little weird now that we have it, some people wanting it completely removed from the entire game… If was something just on OG mode was even fine due to the “must be accurate to the visuals back them”, but from the entire game? and even on maximum graphics settings, seems a little too extreme for me…
At max I would suggest adding better graphics options to control in more details so every player can choose which visuals are prefered for him.
Sadly by what this comment says, it seems to be more a side effect and not a real intended addition to the game visuals Idk how it may be handled properly to make everyone happy…
Thats the entire point of my post: To give UEFN developers access to turn off the setting or not. This bug report isnt about changing the entire games lighting system with no option to turn it back on, its about giving all UEFN developers the option to turn this off or not. I dont want contact shadows on my grass because it clashes with my artistic vision and art style for my project, the same goes for Genshin impact. Shadows are turned off not because of limitations; they are turned off to achieve an art style
Might I ask how this is not a bug and working as intended? I’ve set all my shadow and rendering settings on my foliage to NOT cast shadows and it still casts shadows. That is a bug. Something that is not working properly is not feedback, it’s a bug.
I’m going to close this one so a new ticket isn’t created. We’ve passed along your comment from the other thread to the developers, and they will take a look.
Idk how it may be handled properly to make everyone happy…