Hey everyone,

I’m facing a really weird and haunted issue in Unreal Engine 5 related to montages and camera/head bone behavior.

My setup:

• Camera is attached to a spring arm
• Spring arm is attached to the head bone
• During montage playback, the camera is supposed to follow the head movement

The problem:
The camera is NOT properly following the head bone when a specific montage plays.

What makes this extremely confusing is:

• A few weeks older backup of the SAME project works perfectly
• Camera/spring arm settings are identical
• Blueprint logic is identical
• Montage settings also look identical

The only thing I changed recently before this issue started was:

• Slightly increasing the player capsule radius to fix flashlight overlap issues
• Before montage starts, I untick “Use Pawn Control Rotation” on the follow camera

But even reverting capsule radius back didn’t fix it.

Things I tested:

1. Simple test montage

I made a super simple animation where the head just rotates 90 degrees.

Result:
✅ Camera follows correctly.

So at first I thought the original montage was broken.

BUT…

2. Playing the problematic montage from Persistent Level BP

Result:
✅ Works perfectly.
Camera follows the head correctly.

3. Playing the SAME montage from Sublevel BP

Result:
❌ Camera stops properly following the head bone.

This is the exact same montage and same references.

Other weird behaviors I noticed:

• Sometimes (like 1 out of 10 times) it works perfectly
• Sometimes the camera only follows halfway
• Sometimes it follows for only the first few seconds
• Completely random behavior

Another creepy thing:

• While montage is playing, if I press F8 to leave player camera and then repossess again:
  • I can clearly see the camera/spring arm IS moving with the head bone
  • But the second I return to player camera view, it stops following again

Also:

• Mouse movement still respects the unticked pawn rotation setting correctly
• Head bone itself IS rotating properly during montage

At this point I genuinely don’t know:

• If this is an animation issue
• Camera manager issue
• Possession issue
• Sublevel issue
• Tick order issue
• Or some hidden override happening somewhere

I’m pretty sure this is NOT just a settings problem because the older backup with basically the same setup still works perfectly.

Would really appreciate any ideas or debugging direction because I’ve been stuck on this for days 🙏

Hey everyone,

I’m facing a really weird and haunted issue in Unreal Engine 5 related to montages and camera/head bone behavior.

My setup:

• Camera is attached to a spring arm
• Spring arm is attached to the head bone
• During montage playback, the camera is supposed to follow the head movement

The problem:
The camera is NOT properly following the head bone when a specific montage plays.

What makes this extremely confusing is:

• A few weeks older backup of the SAME project works perfectly
• Camera/spring arm settings are identical
• Blueprint logic is identical
• Montage settings also look identical

The only thing I changed recently before this issue started was:

• Slightly increasing the player capsule radius to fix flashlight overlap issues
• Before montage starts, I untick “Use Pawn Control Rotation” on the follow camera

But even reverting capsule radius back didn’t fix it.

Things I tested:

1. Simple test montage

I made a super simple animation where the head just rotates 90 degrees.

Result:
✅ Camera follows correctly.

So at first I thought the original montage was broken.

BUT…

2. Playing the problematic montage from Persistent Level BP

Result:
✅ Works perfectly.
Camera follows the head correctly.

3. Playing the SAME montage from Sublevel BP

Result:
❌ Camera stops properly following the head bone.

This is the exact same montage and same references.

Other weird behaviors I noticed:

• Sometimes (like 1 out of 10 times) it works perfectly
• Sometimes the camera only follows halfway
• Sometimes it follows for only the first few seconds
• Completely random behavior

Another creepy thing:

• While montage is playing, if I press F8 to leave player camera and then repossess again:
  • I can clearly see the camera/spring arm IS moving with the head bone
  • But the second I return to player camera view, it stops following again

Also:

• Mouse movement still respects the unticked pawn rotation setting correctly
• Head bone itself IS rotating properly during montage

At this point I genuinely don’t know:

• If this is an animation issue
• Camera manager issue
• Possession issue
• Sublevel issue
• Tick order issue
• Or some hidden override happening somewhere

I’m pretty sure this is NOT just a settings problem because the older backup with basically the same setup still works perfectly.

Would really appreciate any ideas or debugging direction because I’ve been stuck on this for days 🙏

Hello everyone,

I’m currently facing an issue in Unreal Engine 5 where “Shadow Depth” is taking a huge amount of performance, and I honestly don’t understand what is causing it because I’m still pretty new to UE5.

Things I already tried:

• Disabled shadows on objects that don’t need them
• Using mostly 1K textures
• Not using Nanite
• Not using Lumen

But even after that, Shadow Depth is still tanking my FPS badly.

I’m really confused about:

• What actually increases Shadow Depth cost?
• How can I find which object/light is causing the issue?
• What tools should I use to debug this properly?
• What are the most common beginner mistakes related to shadows in UE5?

I would really appreciate a detailed explanation because I’m still learning Unreal and not fully familiar with optimization/profiling tools yet.