Unreal Engine 5.6 – Nanite Trees Painted with Foliage Tool Don't Cast Shadows When WPO Is Enabled

[yettyso]

Ah, I see exactly what’s happening — this is a known limitation in Unreal Engine (including 5.6):

When you use World Position Offset (WPO) in a material, Nanite meshes no longer cast dynamic shadows from the offset geometry. Nanite evaluates shadows from the base mesh only, and currently doesn’t account for vertex displacement applied in the material. That’s why your foliage painted with the Foliage Tool looks correct visually, but shadows disappear or stay “stuck” to the original mesh position once WPO is enabled.

[YFL-as]

I think I’ve found a solution… I was struggling with this at first since I didn’t want to give up my ray tracing shadows just to get Nanite shadows to show up. But here’s what worked for me: go to your foliage section, select your foliage in the brushes, and disable “Evaluate World Position Offset.” As soon as I did that, the shadows came back. Hope this helps! (pic in link)UE5 Reference Pic