Ray traced shadows disappear on distant foliage objects

When ray-tracing, shadows are disappearing on more distant foliage… I have a bunch of aspen trees from Speedtree as static meshes in the foreground and as a procedural foliage object and painted foliage in the background of this shot. In the non-ray-traced version, the background trees (at left) shadow each other and themselves as do the foreground trees (at right) as expected:

But with ray-tracing on, the shadowing on the background foliage trees disappears:

As the camera approaches the background, the foliage trees will become fully shaded…???

I thought that ray-tracing meant not worrying about shadow distances! Now I can’t find the setting that could be causing this. Can anyone suggest what setting might cause ray-traced shadowing to stop at a distance on foliage?

Thanks!

-Donald

Anyone? This seems like a big problem! Why would ray-traced shadows on foliage disappear at a distance?

You can use the command: r.RayTracing.InstancedStaticMeshes.Culling 0

2 Likes

Woah, after searching a lot this is what fixed the issue of disappearing ray traced foliage shadows.

Thanks a lot!!
ak

For anyone wondering why it doesn’t work in UE5 the command is:

r.RayTracing.Geometry.InstancedStaticMeshes.Culling