Quick answer: Nanite is silently disabled for translucent materials, World Position Offset (in older versions), and unsupported platforms — you see the fallback mesh. Check the material and platform.
A high-detail statue uses Nanite. Up close it looks blocky — the engine is rendering the low-poly fallback, not the Nanite representation.
Why Nanite Disables
- Translucent / masked materials: Nanite historically supports opaque best; translucency falls back.
- World Position Offset: supported in recent UE but with caveats; older versions fall back.
- Unsupported platform: older mobile / some consoles run the fallback mesh.
- Nanite not enabled on the asset: check the static mesh’s Nanite Settings.
Verify Nanite Is Active
Viewport → View Mode → Nanite Visualization → Overview. Nanite geometry shows in the visualization; fallback meshes appear empty. Confirms which is rendering.
Fallback Triangle Percent
Static Mesh → Nanite Settings → Fallback Triangle Percent. This controls the quality of the fallback mesh used when Nanite is unavailable. Raise it (or set Fallback Relative Error) so the fallback isn’t painfully low-poly.
Material Fix
If the material must be Nanite-rendered, keep it Opaque. For foliage or glass needing translucency, accept the fallback and tune its triangle percent up.
Verifying
Nanite Visualization shows the statue as Nanite geometry. Up-close detail is crisp. On platforms that fall back, the fallback is high enough quality to be acceptable.
“Nanite silently falls back. Use the visualizer to confirm, fix the material or raise fallback quality.”
For cross-platform titles, budget both: Nanite path for PC/next-gen consoles, a quality fallback mesh for everything else.