What causes transparent objects and shadows?

Transparent materials often do not receive or cast shadows by default because the transparent render path skips the shadow pass, so foliage and glass look unlit or float without shadows.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Transparent Objects Not Receiving or Casting Shadows

Quick answer: Enable shadow casting and receiving on the transparent material, use alpha-clip (cutout) for foliage shadows, and configure the shadow pass for transparency.

Transparent shadow problems are the skipped shadow path. Enabling it fixes them. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Enable shadow casting and receiving

Transparent materials frequently default to not casting or receiving shadows. Enable both on the material so the object participates in shadows, rather than looking unlit or floating.

2. Use alpha clip for foliage

For foliage and cutout-style transparency, use alpha-clip (cutout) rendering rather than alpha blend, since clipped shadows work cleanly while blended transparency shadows are tricky. This gives leaves proper shadows.

3. Configure the shadow pass

Ensure the material's shadow pass handles the transparency (alpha test in the shadow caster). Without a configured transparent shadow pass, the object either casts a solid shadow or none at all.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.