Description

Nanite meshes only cast virtual shadow maps and do not cast any distance field shadows, regardless of the distance of the shadow casting mesh to the camera.

Steps to Reproduce
  • Open the scene attached to the case (see addl info URL) or:
  • Open World Template map
  • Place two engine cubes and enable Nanite on one of them in the mesh editor. Optionally scale them to 5,5,5 so the issue is easier to visualize
  • Select the Directional light
  • Set "Distance Field Shadows" to true and "Distance Field Shadow Distance" to 200000 to make sure nothing is cut by the range
  • Set "Dynamic Shadow Distance" to 2000, so that we can se VSM up to 2000 range and then we expect to see distance fields
  • Set the camera near the cubes to see their shadow rendered entirely as VSMs
  • Zoom out the camera to see the shadow being correctly cut out at 2000 range on the non-Nanite cube, but notice that the Nanite cube shadows will remain VSM and do not switch to Distance Field Shadows, regardless of distance to the camera.

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Unresolved
Affects Versions5.7
CreatedFeb 16, 2026
UpdatedFeb 16, 2026
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