I’ve encountered a shadow rendering issue in Unreal Engine 5.6.
When using Nanite-enabled trees painted with the Foliage Tool, and Evaluate World Position Offset is enabled in the material, the trees do not cast any shadows, neither direct nor indirect, even with Lumen turned off.
However, if I drag and drop the same mesh directly into the level (with identical material and settings), shadows appear as expected.
This issue wasn’t present in UE 5.5, so it seems to be a regression in 5.6.
I’ve tested all combinations:
Nanite + WPO = No shadows (only when painted)
Nanite without WPO = Shadows work
Non-Nanite + WPO = Shadows work
Has anyone else run into this issue? Is there a known workaround, or has Epic acknowledged this yet?
if you are using ray traced shadows in directional light then this problem will be stay either turn it off or even if you want to have ray traced shadows with nanite foliage try this CVAR
works for me always, if this works in the editor then add it to the engine .ini file for to take effect whenever you open the project or you’ll have to add this CVAR everytime you close and open the project.
Thank you very much for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn’t resolve the issue.
I’m using the default settings in Unreal Engine 5.6 with Virtual Shadow Maps enabled. I simply opened a new project, added foliage using the Foliage Paint Tool, enabled Nanite, and applied a material with World Position Offset.
If I disable Evaluate World Position Offset, the shadows appear correctly. But I need it enabled for wind animation in the trees.
Everything worked perfectly in Unreal Engine 5.5, so this seems to be a regression in 5.6.
maybe try turning off WPO in your material and then try this CVAR, also i would try switching raytraced shadows enabled and disabled just to be sure its not caused by directional light because it was the culprit for me in 5.5
r.RayTracing.Geometry.InstancedStaticMeshes.EvaluateWPO 1 - ON
r.RayTracing.Geometry.InstancedStaticMeshes.EvaluateWPO 0 - OFF -default
I tried your suggestions, but unfortunately they didn’t work.
I tested both with Ray Tracing enabled and disabled, and in my case, I’m using Virtual Shadow Maps the issue still persists.
yeah i don’t know think of any else solution that i can give.
it’s like whenever since UE5 launched epic launches new version they break something from the last ones and create more problems rather than solving them.
Exactly. Unreal Engine 5.5 had a major Nav Mesh bug that I ran into, so I was really looking forward to 5.6 and thankfully, that issue was fixed.
But now they’ve introduced this new foliage bug, which makes 5.6 unusable for me until it’s resolved.
I honestly don’t understand how something like this wasn’t caught before release.
I don’t think that they don’t know about these problems but still they go through with it because there is always a workaround the only problem with it is that you either have to do a lot of work for it to be the you want or it comes with options like take this or that you can’t have both.
Honestly i don’t know why they made lumen standard for lighting, UE4 by the end was working really good but the moment they introduced UE5.4 lumen with kind of integrated raytracing, there have been so many problems, even though its a huge jump in visuals yes but optimization is way way bad or just takes a lots of time or high hardware power to work with.
Even though community have been complaining about optimization but still Epic is doing what they want.
Hi, I checked this issue in versions 5.5 and 5.6 and did not encounter such a problem.
I tried to create this problem, and all that allowed me to do this were the console commands described above or the settings of the Ray Tracing Shadow renderer.
Could you provide more information, for example, screenshot of settings or a video?
TFS. Can you also check with a more complex Tree pack or something? Some simple assets like cylinders sometimes cast shadows as intended. but, none of the trees, or bushes I tested cast shadows. Also, can you check if you get lumen indirect shadows properly when the trees are covered by something?
I took the trees from Epic Games’ project “ElectricDreamsEnv” where the trees have 1.5 million triangles each, and I also included the nanite statistics so you can see how much geometry is in the scene.
I hope I understood your request about indirect shadows correctly.
TFS. It’s weird how everything’s working properly on your PC. It just doesn’t work for me. I tried everything from updating and reinstalling drivers, tried different projects, different settings nothing works for me.
After observing your video closely I kind of feel like it also has some shadow artifacts especially in indirectly lit areas. I think if you switch between Nanite on and off you may be able to confirm if there’s a difference between nanite on vs off shadows.
This console command brings back shadows form me. However, it’s still looks way worse compared to unreal engine 5.5. All the indirectly lit areas are noisy mess.
I’ve tested all combinations:
No shadows (only when painted)
Shadows work