# Foliage has a Shadow noise/grain - How to fix it?

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/foliage-has-a-shadow-noise-grain-how-to-fix-it/727330>\
**Category:** Rendering\
**Tags:** noise, unreal-engine, Anti-Aliasing, Foliage, ambient-occlusion, Nanite, question\
**Created:** [December 13, 2022, 12:28pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/foliage-has-a-shadow-noise-grain-how-to-fix-it/727330 "2022-12-13T12:28:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

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**Author:** ![ClockworkOcean](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/clockworkocean/32/1169999_2.png) [@ClockworkOcean](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/ClockworkOcean)\
**Post date:** [December 15, 2022, 12:08pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/foliage-has-a-shadow-noise-grain-how-to-fix-it/727330/9 "2022-12-15T12:08:53Z")

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I know they are very into ‘early Z pass’, you might try that?

> [@Early Z pass performance breakthrough?](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/early-z-pass-performance-breakthrough/115013):
>
> Enabling Early Z pass on Masked materials in render settings is giving me a huge boost in a scene with tons of foliage. However, it is unable to render 2d sprites in some areas while causing jagged shadows of characters in one area. I initially thought that the jagged shadows were being caused because of something else. Turning Early Z pass off or setting it to automatic fixes the shadow issue but brings back the overdraw and shader complexity. My questions: \>I have been reading up on early Z …

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