How do I get distance field shadows to work with the foliage tool?

[Lmourao]

@MostHost_LA

Read the doc. It gives pointers specific to foliage.

also this
https://youtu.be/ihg4uirMcec

Technically you can sample the global fields in the material, maybe you can force foliage to look the same with that.

Howrver, I really think the issue is the setting on the mesh used for the foliage brush.
what engine version are you running?

I’m using 4.25.1 but the same is true for 4.24, I haven’t tried in earlier versions.

I had read that doc already, like I said, I’m not interested in distance field AO, it may look good for that kind of scene but doesnt for mine, and like I also said, the SAME tree on the right is the same model, the way it looks there is the way I want it to look in the foliage.

I’ve also tried 2 sided distance field mesh before, it doesn’t look good in the normal model and it still doesn’t work for foliage.

Thanks for the video though, I haven’t watched it all yet but it seems full of good info.

But in regards to my problem I’m starting to think that it simply doesn’t work with foliage.
You can try it yourself, with a default scene to be quicker.

Get distance fields activated, get a model (plant or anything else). Place it to your scene, activate Distance field indirect shadows on it and see what it does.
Then drag the same model to foliage, paint single, activate affect indirect lighting on it, paint one next to your original model and see what it does.

Build and see again.

Then switch it on and off on your original model and you will see that when it is off it looks the same as the one in foliage.

My theory so far is that it doesn’t work with foliage at all, what that box does is probably to say that the model will affect the volumetric light map and will affect OTHER models that have it on outside of foliage.