LOD's casting shadow when they shouldn't

[SpiderPig]

The attached model has LOD's.  If you disable shadows for LOD3, it won't cast shadows if you drag that LOD into the editor by itself, but it will still cast shadows as part of it's parent.  In the shot below you can see that LOD3 (a billboard) on the right casts no shadow but half the shadow of the tree on the left has the billboards shadow still.

 

 

[Josh]

When an LOD is loaded from a model, it just adds the meshes found in that model into a new LOD. No entity properties are copied from the LOD model file.

A model with several LODs is just a single model.

[SpiderPig]

That's what I thought, but the shadow casting is a material property isn't it?  Shouldn't shadows be per mesh then? 🤔

[Josh]

I see nothing in this model that would cause the lowest resolution LOD to not cast shadows. However, the wrong LOD might be getting selected when rendering shadows. Directional lights are made up of four box lights.

[SpiderPig]

The first image in this thread shows LOD3 with no shadows on the right because I disabled them for that model.

What I'm trying to say is, should the shadow option in the material properties be removed if its a "per model feature" and not a "per material feature"?

[Josh]

It's both. Both the material and entity must have shadows enabled for a shadow to be cast.

[SpiderPig]

What about models with two meshes.  Do they both need shadows enabled or just one?

[Josh]

For each mesh, if its material does not use shadows, it will not cast a shadow.

[SpiderPig]

I'll test this with the latest update as what I'm seeing / describing might be related to the other shadow bug. 

[Josh]

Is there still any problem with this?

[SpiderPig]

There is still some issues.  Project is up to date.  I've attached the map I used as well as the updated files.  Extract the pine tree to the Models folder.

• As you move the camera away the billboard stage has no material applied.  Yet if you drag LOD3 into the scene it does and it's shadow casting is correct, yet as part of the main model it is not correct.
• You'll also notice that changing the shadow casting of LOD3 only sometimes updates the editor straight away.
• Also, not saving a model will still save it.
• After a bit more playing around I'm finding changing the shadow casting of LOD3 is not even updating the editor at all no matter what I do.

I think if you play around with the attached map you should find a few things not working like they should.

 

Pine.zip PineLeaves_DIFF.zip

[Josh]

I just updated the editor with the recent fixes.

[SpiderPig]

Nice, pretty sure it's fixed now.