Scaling a skeletal mesh with capsule shadows breaks the shadows

Scaling skeletal mesh with capsule shadows breaks the shadows.

I can recreate it with any skeletal mesh I’ve tried.

The quickest way to test it would be:

  1. Use the ThirdPersonExampleMap
  2. Place a SK_Mannequin in the scene separate from the player.
  3. Hook up the shadow physics asset with the existing physics asset.
  4. Enable capsule direct shadows / capsule indirect shadows on the placed SK_Mannequin
  5. Scale the character to 2x and back to 1x and compare the shadows.

Also, I’ve also had some issues with a few meshes where capsule shadows not matching up with how the physics asset looks, it might be related? Is there a way to preview the physics asset in the viewport?

Hello,

This behavior is expected. Using the default physics asset for your Capsule Shadows is not recommended, as you will definitely not see the best results. Also, scaling the skeletal meshes is not advised. This is because it is using a Tiled Deferred Culling method to break down the capsule shadows for only what needs to be rendered. When you scale the mesh up, it is easier to see the tiles. See this video for more information regarding Tiled Deferred Culling: Paragon Feature Examples: Cinematic Lighting & Rendering | Feature Highlight | Unreal Engine - YouTube

What you can try to do is play around with the console variables, which will allow you to alter the capsule settings and potentially see better results. You can find more information about this method here: http://timhobsonue4.snappages.com/lighting-capsule-shadows

Finally, another method you can try is to create a brand new physics asset from scratch. The Physics Asset uses the capsules as a way to generate cheap shadows off of them. What you can do is create a new one with fewer capsules and manually assign this to the skeletal mesh.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Have a great day

Thanks, I just wanted to make sure the behavior was expected. Sometimes scaling is useful, but I definitely understand if I have to make a compromise there.