Media Plate shadow cut off.

Alexakosofc
Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:52:58 +0000
Asset Creation

I’m having a shadow issue with a Media Plate / ImgMedia setup in UE5.

I’m using an EXR sequence with alpha (keyed greenscreen performance) on a Media Plate (SM_MediaPlateScreen).

The material is Masked and uses the alpha correctly. In the Material Editor preview, the character’s shadow looks correct.

In the level, the character is shown correctly (no background), and the shadow is cast on the floor, but the shadow is clipped at above a fixed distance:

Below the hips → shadow is visible down to the feet.

Above the hips → no shadow at all.

Some observations:

I need to scale the actor by about 5.0 so the person has the right world size.

At Scale 5.0, the upper part of the shadow disappears, even though the mesh is not intersecting the floor and Bounds Scale is increased.

Even if the Media Plate Actor scale is 1.0, the shadow will cut off as shown in the screenshot.

I duplicated and enlarged the Static Mesh (SM_MediaPlateScreen) via Build Scale and also tested increased Bounds Scale → problem remains.

When I enable Dynamic Shadow in the Lightmass Settings of the Media Plate, a large rectangular shadow appears from the cutoff point, but that’s obviously just the plane’s full rectangle, not the person’s silhouette.

So:

Material preview shows correct per‑pixel shadow.

In the world, at higher actor scales, only the lower part of the character casts a shadow; upper body shadow is clipped.

Has anyone run into this with Media Plate / ImgMedia actors?
Is there a known limitation with shadows and scaled Media Plates, or a recommended way to get correct per‑pixel shadows from an alpha‑masked media plate at larger scales?

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