Thanks! that might be it.
I could really do with a fix for this as well. Voted, but @Tim, do you know if anyone is looking at this yet?
Cheers,
Chris
Sorry Chris, but the issue is still backlogged. Maybe one day. The reality, also is, that not all features/bug will be added or fixed by Epic. With source availability, we do leave open the option for teams to resolve some of these on their own projects as needed. Unfortunately, not every bug or feature will be addressed by Epic.
@Tim I completely understand, no problem 
- Iāve voted for it anyway, so weāll see.
Unfortunately itās not the kind of thing we can fix as we donāt have a programmer (thereās only two of us). Weāll come up with a work around for now.
This is still backlogged? Daammmmn son. Everytime I try to get a isometric style game idea into UE4 this bums me out and make me throw the project into Unity -_-
Hereās the āSide Scroller Templateā example project from UE 4.17.1, with an orthographic camera:
You can barely make out the platforms. You canāt even tell that the character is standing on something!
I tried building the light (light quality set to āProductionā) and not even the ābakedā shadows show up. Theses ābakedā shadows are supposed to be greyscale textures placed on UV Channel 2, right? Then why arenāt these ātexturesā being displayed in orthographic view?
I believe this is a completely different scenario.
Even if the orthographic shadows were working.
You are using the orthographic camera from the side, so you canāt even see the surfaces that are receiving the shadows.
You canāt see the floor because the camera is completely parallel to the ground surfaces.
To see them you would have to angle the camera a little bit.
I havenāt tested this bug in a long time, so I donāt know if itās been fixed, but I doubt it.
Thereās a default directional light (from the āSide Scroller Templateā) in the scene. Shadows are being rendered both in the editor viewport AND with the camera set to āPerspectiveā when I click the āPlayā button, but as soon as I hit āPlayā with the camera in āOrtographicā, everything looks washed out, because of the missing shadows.
Here, I rotated the camera by 15Ā° on Y and Z, for a better look:
I even tried setting the render output to Forward Rendering (from the project settings). It didnāt add any shadows.
I feel like Iām maybe highjacking an older thread from 2015ā¦ But the OPās issue still doesnāt seem solved in 2017, in Unreal Engine 4.17.1.
Yes
thatās sort of the point on this whole thread. Itās still not fixed.
And it probably wonāt be fixed unless Epic makes a game that uses orthographic cameras in 3D.
But I thought that Forward Rendering would make it work
Another thing to check might be that your camera is too far. Try setting it closer.
Another workaround is to use a very very narrow field of view, but this also requires the camera to be farther and you have to adjust the shadows accordingly.
Another non-optimal solution would be to create your own shadows, in the same way that epic did in the Showdown demo.
Itās actually good for the performance, but it wonāt look as good as actual shadows.
I canāt find the description of how they did it, but basically using decals under the characters feet that changed the darkness according to foot distance to the floor.
But yeah, in general, this bug is sad 
I wouldnāt count on epic fixing it. Someone with a good knowledge of rendering has to come to fix it.
Using 4.17.1 and shadows are still not visible through orthographic cameras.
Setting the camera to Perspective with a low FOV (something like 10) and moving the camera waaay back produces terrible results: blurry shadows (even with Lighting Quality set to āProductionā), and the shadows look warped because theyāre perspective shadows, not āorthographic shadowsā.
Epic, please fix this. This thread is 2.5 years old! Just like my (soon to be abandoned, apparently) 2.5D side scroller project that looks like absolute dog ā ā ā ā , completely flat. Come on! If you guys are not going to fix this, then you might as well remove the Side Scroller/Side Scroller 2D/Top Down templates.
Guess what? 4.18.1 still not working.
Cāmon Epic, please fix that, or just like Andrei Despinoiu says remove these nonfunctional templates.
This is so sad, really sad.
Just spent 3 weeks trying to figure out why I donāt have any shadows in my game, banging my head against the wall repeatedly. Turns out it was this issue all along. 4.18.2. Please fix it.
Please donāt remove the orthographic camera completely! Iām still using it. 2D is going to be in vouge soon again, Iām sure. Just look at āno truce with the furries.ā
Just adding that getting shadows in orthographic is quite important for me as well.
4.20 and itās till not working. Please fix this.
Second most voted issue to fix and almost 4 years later ā¦ still broken. Iām not a numbers guy but maybe itās really hard or impossible to implement into the engine correctly ?
and now itās the most upvoted thing, I donāt think they even look at that oneā¦
Please Epic, let us know why this hasnāt been fixed yet.
Last thing we heard this bug was not a priority.
This is the highest rated bug and itās still backlogged. Itās almost 4 years old!
Why do you even have a voting system if our priority is not your priority?
it seems to be broken even for 4.21.
This is the most voted issueā¦ I think it is extremely hard to fix otherwise they would have already provided a patch. ā ā ā ā ā¦