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Use Area Shadows for Stationary Light

Where: select a Stationary light, then search Use Area Shadows for Stationary Light in its Details panel under Lightmass.

An area shadow has a narrow edge close to the object casting it and a softer edge farther away. Think of a chair leg touching the floor: its contact shadow should stay defined while the shadow of its seat can spread out.

What the setting changes​

This is Unreal's option for area shadows in a Stationary light's precomputed shadowing. It is not a switch that makes every shadow in the level soft. Static lights already use area shadowing in the baked-lighting workflow; Movable lights rely on their runtime shadow method. See Epic's Stationary Light reference.

The emitter size matters too. For a Directional Light, check Source Angle. Enabling area shadows with a very small light source can still produce a fairly sharp result.

How it fits Spectral​

Spectral includes Stationary Area Shadows in Settings > Fix Suggested Settings. That action enables the native option on eligible light components in the loaded editing world. Save the affected levels afterwards. It does not update lights in every unopened map.

Treat this as the native precomputed-shadow setting, not an enable switch for Spectral's separate shadow features:

  • Baked Static Shadows controls Spectral's stored static-geometry shadow data.
  • PCSS filters supported shadow paths at runtime to vary softness with separation from the caster.
  • Stationary Light Shadow Samples in Baker quality controls bake sampling, not the size of the light source.

Getting a clean result​

Enable the option, bake, and inspect both contact edges and shadows farther from the caster. If a baked edge is blocky, check the receiving mesh's lightmap resolution before increasing unrelated probe settings. More samples can reduce noise, but cannot add texels to a low-resolution lightmap.

Different shadow pathsNote

A dynamic shadow, a native baked shadow, and a Spectral PCSS-filtered shadow do not use identical controls. If this checkbox does not change the shadow you are inspecting, first identify which path is drawing it. The checkbox alone does not enable PCSS.

When to rebake​

Rebake after changing this option to evaluate precomputed shadowing. A viewport refresh alone does not rebuild it. Runtime PCSS adjustments are separate and can update live.