Making textures on models with alpha cast shadows:

[Bikerdude]

So TDM has a lot of textures with alpha, and an added level of detail I like to make this textures cast shadows. Where said textures are twosided this isnt possible, but when said texture is on a model you can remove the twosided line and still see both sides of the texture. And because you have remove the twosided line that textures with then cast a shadow. I have attached a stock fern that I have tweaked to cast a shadow.

The issue I'm running into is I am trying to do the same thing on the palmtree leaf texture and for the life me I cant get the alphatest to work on the leaf texture. Its just casting a shadow of the whole patch, instead of the edges of the leaf...

So any idea's on what I'm doing incorrectly in this instance?

Edited June 10 by Bikerdude

[Bikerdude]

So I have made discovery, I put the model inside another light entity with a smaller volume (500,500,600) and the palm tree leaves started casting shadows as expected. The light in other area has radius of 6000 6000 100.

@stgatilov is there any work around for this issue..? I already have a custom mission config with the following lines set as I have other parts of the map with large trees and medium sized lights that cast shadows from thier leaves just fine - 

 

[Bikerdude]

So the issue was the size of the light, its a single very large light (sun) so the fix was to create a custom shadowmesh for the Palm tree.

 

[stgatilov]

Can't say anything certain.

There is the well-known trigger that turns large shadow map lights into stencil shadows, in which case alpha-testing does not work. Aside from that, I don't think there is any special cases for alpha-tested shadows.

[nbohr1more]

On 6/11/2026 at 7:56 AM, Bikerdude said:

So I have made discovery, I put the model inside another light entity with a smaller volume (500,500,600) and the palm tree leaves started casting shadows as expected. The light in other area has radius of 6000 6000 100.

@stgatilov is there any work around for this issue..? I already have a custom mission config with the following lines set as I have other parts of the map with large trees and medium sized lights that cast shadows from thier leaves just fine - 

 

Yes, you would need to set r_maxShadowMapLight to something larger. Keep increasing until you get the right results. Downside is that this will get worse and worse for performance.

[Bikerdude]

On 6/13/2026 at 1:02 PM, nbohr1more said:

Yes, you would need to set r_maxShadowMapLight to something larger. Keep increasing until you get the right results. Downside is that this will get worse and worse for performance.

I gave on that path fairly quickly after even increasing both to 32k made no difference. The custom shadow mesh for the model was the way to go.

Edited June 15 by Bikerdude