Is there another way to get stylized grass?

Development World Creation
, , , , ,
1

I am trying to make stylized grass but the only way to achieve my desired look is by making the blend mode translucent in the instanced material. However I get flickering issues with the grass because the grass is technically see-through. I have tried to just remove shadows to get the look but there are still shadows on the underside of the grass because the sun is not lighting that part. They also get this weird fuzzy looking effect when the simplegrasswind is applied to it.

Image of translucent grass (top) and non-translucent grass (bottom)

Untitled
Untitled1920Ă—1080 287 KB

1 Like
2

You will always get the fuzzy effect with moving actors at the moment. It’s to do with Lumen.

1 Like
3

That is actually a video I referred to but nothing he said in it actually helps besides the way I found…

4

Did you try just turning off the shadow in the foliage tool? ( I don’t know how you’re populating the landscape )

image

( same applies in landscape grass type ).

5

I have turned off shadows in the foliage tool. I believe it isnt the fact that the grass is casting a shadow, because I can visibly see that it isnt on the ground, howver the undersides are not getting lit by the sun, giving it the illusion that it has shadows.

6

Strangely enough, the effect a lot of people are struggling to achieve… :slight_smile:

7

The answer is in here ( I think ) somewhere

1 Like
8

I have solved the issue. I made the normals of the model in blender face Z up. And then I uncheck tangent space normals in the material menu. Thank you so much!

2 Likes
9

This is the EXACT issue I have been wrestling with for like 3 days now.

I have followed four separate tutorials and I always end up in that same precarious situation, where black artifacts are casted on the backs of the grass.

Your final comment is curious to me, since I am using Maya for my modeling of the planes. For Maya, you have to adjust the “Y” axis up for the normals up position.

I hate that I can’t resolve this issue. And, I don’t want to set my material to translucent. I want to ram my head against a brick wall right now.

image
image1550Ă—884 759 KB

image
image1070Ă—791 314 KB

Doesn’t look terrible from this angle, but here is the back (towards the sun)

image
image1564Ă—886 379 KB

I’ve tried so many different things, including changing all the parameters of the materials and virtual textures.

For now, I am watching the @ClockworkOcean video posted and hopefully I can find an answer there.

10

General rules:

Never use transparent materials.

Avoid foliage shader if you don’t plan on dealing with SSS (sub surface scattering).

Try and model the grass sub 1k verts but with as little transparency as possible.

Enable opacity calcs in pre-pass.

Grass mesh should be 100uu by 100uu (1mx1m to keep instance count somewhat normal).

All normals of all grass blades always have to be Z up. In engine. DDC aren’t necessarily left handed, so know your coordinate systems.

All shadow casting from grass meshes has to be disabled (Note, grass can still Receive shadows, so not in the material).

Vertex colors should be used to derive darkness of the grass blade. 0 at bottom verts. 1 at highest verts. Then mix in into the material

Last General rule… It’s unreal. Bashing your head into a fort’s defensive wall hoping to break through is easier than unreal. Get use to it (or for sanity change engine ;))

1 Like