Culling is different if asset is isolated or in the Foliage tool. Why?

Development World Creation
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1

Hi everyone,

I have a really strange problem that I never saw before. I have a specific asset (a small plant) that when I place manually in the world has a perfectly normal culling but if I place that very same asset in the Foliage tool and then place some of its instances in the world using the Foliage tool, the culling behaves differently and very agressively. Specifically, the leaves disappear way too early, even though the stem remains, which is even stranger. The stem behaves the same in or out of the Foliage tool, but the leaves behave differently. I don’t understand…

I tried unchecking auto computed LOD, screen size to 0 or other values, I did all sorts of things I could think of, to no avail. Both leaves and stem are really simple materials, nothing fancy (a texture, some SSS, some wind, a normal and that’s it).

Any hints, please? Thanks a lot.

2

Hey there @Artur_R! Culling for standalone SM’s and their instanced foliage counterparts are actually wildly different. Foliage meshes actually are culled in clusters which to me seem arbitrarily chosen based on count/distance, and are decided by it’s cull distance settings and some values in the materials themselves. This could be causing that aggressive culling. I’m not the strongest in this arena, so let me know if this was in the right direction.

That said, it’s very odd the stem remains but the leave disappear. I’d assume the whole thing would be cluster culled immediately. If possible could we see the foliage’s settings and the way it pops in and out?