Weird Shadows

I’ve ran into a problem in UE5 I was hoping some of you could have the answer for (Image 1). I have this triangulated mesh in UE that generates this weird shadows. Turning “Self Shadows Only” removes those but the mesh doesn’t cast shadows on the scene (Image 2), which I need, and turning Contact Shadows On aggravates the problem as you can see in Image 3. Any idea how to get rid of these? I know the problem isn’t the mesh triangulation, just can’t figure out what is. Thanks



Hey @CapitaoGio,
Do you have a physics asset attached to your mesh?

I do have the physics asset that generates automatically when I import the mesh to Unreal Engine

is this nanite? also the material seems to be the default missing material? Why it has a physycs asset? is that a skeletal mesh?

It is not nanite. It is in fact the default missing material but If I apply the correct material to it doesn’t change much besides the color. I have suspicions that it has something to due with the fact that the mesh has soften edges but those are the shadows from the mesh with hard edges. There’s no particular need for a physics asset yes so I can delete it but it is a Static Mesh generated from a skeletal mesh.
Here’s another SS of the object imported as a static mesh only, no physics asset no skeletal mesh and Material applied.

I don’t follow this. is a static mesh or a skeletal mesh? when hoovering over the file in the content browser what it say?

are you sure doesn’t have nanite enabled. those looks like nanite triangles when the nanite files is not setup correctly. also quite common

Ok let me recap, since it may have gotten a bit confusing with all the info. It’s a static mesh and it has nanite disabled

what happens if you move the camera?

did you actually check if is a static mesh with nanite disabled or you think it is because you have generated the mesh somehow.

sorry :crazy_face: you never know

No problem! Yes I checked the nanite and it is in fact disabled, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is happening with all my shadows in the scene, some are just more abrupt like in this example. Here’s a gif of another example where you can see the sharp shadows.

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This looks like something that virtual shadow maps does (ray traced shadows too). It appears to ignore normals smoothing in the mesh when creating shadows. Only good old Cascaded shadow maps (“shadow method”->“shadow maps” in settings) seems to create soft shadows that are aware of smoothing.
shadows_CSM

That was 100% correct! I was disabling contact shadows because it seemed to make it less visible but it was still there. That setting made it much better! Thanks