Hi everyone,
I’m running into an issue with translucent materials in Unreal Engine 5.6 and I’m not sure if it’s an engine limitation or if I’m missing something in my setup.
Context
I’m trying to create a simple glass material using:
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Blend Mode: Translucent
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Lighting Mode: Surface ForwardShading
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Shading Model: Default Lit
Even with a completely empty material (just the default nodes), the shadows cast onto the translucent surface appear extremely pixelated / blocky.
Important detail:
This happens even if the material is basically empty (no textures, no complex nodes), so it doesn’t seem to be related to shader complexity.
Opaque materials in the same scene receive perfectly smooth shadows, but as soon as the material is translucent with Surface ForwardShading, the shadow becomes very low resolution and visibly pixelated. The issue persists even in a very simple test scene with minimal setup.
So I’m wondering:
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Is this a known limitation of translucent lighting in UE5?
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Are translucent shadows expected to be lower resolution due to the Translucency Lighting Volume system?
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Is there a recommended workflow for glass that avoids this (for example using masked materials instead of translucent)?
If anyone has run into this before or knows the correct setup for clean shadows on translucent materials, I’d really appreciate the help.
Thanks!
