I’m still somewhat new to unreal, and have been following this wonderful [tutorial][1] to create a simple medieval scene. I deviated a bit since I’m looking to build more of an actual game where you can run around (rather than just a static scene), and I was going for a different lighting effect and overall mood (something a bit more vibrant and game-like). But overall, I’m quite pleased with how it’s turning out so far.
However, there’s one issue I’m not quite sure how to go about figuring out. I’m using some grass foliage from Quixel, and I’m finding that there are some grass types that seem to respond too aggressively to light, whereas others hardly respond at all. I’m guessing it’s an issue with the material, but I’m not sure how to go about troubleshooting or correcting it.
Here is what the grass looks like when it is directly lit:
And here is what it looks like after turning the camera:
Notice how jarring it looks - when used at high density, the grass appears almost black when facing away from the sun.
What’s interesting is another grass type from the same asset pack seems to have the opposite problem, and hardly responds at all. I put together this simple level to compare, and also shows the scene setup / lighting I’m using:
It appears not to matter what the density is, or whether it’s placed via foliage tool or directly as a static mesh - just including all that to rule anything out.
The “Thatching Grass” asset is this one from quixel:
And the “Lemon Grass” asset is this one, also from quixel:
Both grass types actually use the same material instance, but obviously with different albedo, normal, opacity and roughness textures. Here is the output when looking at the “Overview” buffer visualization, in case it helps with analyzing this:
Why would these two grass types behave so differently with respect to lighting? And how can I go about fixing the thatching grass so the change isn’t quite so extreme (and maybe also tweak the lemon grass so it actually responds a little bit more to changing light)?
