Well, dynamic light is very expensive so I it’s expected. I have a huge world covered in thick vegetation and it runs fine, but would run way better without dynamic light.
Cascaded shadow maps need a lot of optimization work. The default values in the UE 4 are greatly exaggerated. Had the Shadow Distance in UDK yet 2k there are UE4 20k. Skyrim has on highest settings even a 2k Shadow Distance.
Furthermore, the Number of Dynamic Shadow Cascades need a lot of resources.
In UDK I had for my “The Thick Wood Project” these settings:
Whole Scene Dynamic Shadow Radius 10096
Num Whole Scene Dynamic Shadow Cascades 5
Cascade Distribtion exponent 3
The complete world (1009 landscape = 258048 unreal units) run stable and smooth. I have not yet tested whether the settings to run well in the UE 4.
Go to the marketplace, you will see that there is preview of a realistic landscape example. I bet that includes realistic trees and grass. 
I’m looking forward to it!
The preview picture show one conifer type without edit normals and no vertex alpha ao.
I tweaked my static lighting settings, and turned off dynamic shadows for the foliage - much better performance! Looks absolutely phenomenal.
Does someone know a good plugin for Blender to edit the vertex normals for trees and grass and which can be exported for UE4? My google search wasn’t much successful, but I’m noob in Blender.
one is working pretty well for me:
https://forums.epicgames/threads/986388-Blender-UDK-FBX-Tools-Addon
Thanks, it was what I needed!
@all
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I’m not sure, should be grass normal looks straight up or be bented like in picture?
://wiki.polycount/VertexNormal?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=chai_bentnormals.jpg -
Have the material of the grass to be “Tangent Space Normal” = off even with edited normals? If I set on, I get dark grass on some angles to the sun, the edited normals of the grass are looking straight up
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I have some strange lighting behavior of the grass. If I look from some distance and the sun is behind me (so I look at side of grass which is shined by the sun) the grass in the shadow is very dark (pic1). If I go more near the grass (pic2), the grass gets brighter. Same if I look from a higher position, the grass gets brighter too. If I go to the opposite side, so I look at the sun and face the side of the grass which isn’t shined by the sun, the grass is brighter.
my grass material:
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should I set the grass object normals to two-sided in Blender?
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Should I by importing into UE4 set “Import normals” or “Import normals and tangents”?
Hey work so far!
Did you tried to do, some materials for SpeedTree trees ? Would love to see, some good shaded ST tree, my attemps so far, have been well. Subpar to say at least 
I have found out that the Ambient Occlusion (in Postprocessing) causes . Have someone by his own grass too?
the content in pictures are:
-Grass mesh from OliverMH - user/OliverMH
-Tropical Plants from 3dmodels-textures ://www.3dmodels-textures/store/3dmodels/Vegetation/Tropical
-Rock texture from gametextures ://gametextures/
-some content from the free examples from Epic
Hi guys,
today i create a InteractiveFoliage material for LocalBasedPlayerPosition. Here a short break with mattree.
&d=1408023096
mask creation:
Create a gradiant RGBA texture and use slide offset. My mask use:
R = X+
G = X-
B = Y+
A = Y-
color spektrum
&d=1408023720
result
://img5.fotos-hochladen.net/uploads/result215qjcusg74.jpg
For no stretches u can modifiy with the object position node.
U can use with BP for actor or player. A tutorial to create can u finde here:
?v=XYPPd5oLoPM
Hope was helpfull.
greetings
@anonymous_user_fb796d6c
next time i create a interactive foliage material for vertex color based foliage.
Hey ,
Any of posting a short video? It’s hard to tell what is happening from the screenshot.
You can move the grass when running trough it, i guess.
Yes
@anonymous_user_fb796d6c small video
?v=3ccTc2su6w0&=youtu.be
://s1.directupload.net/images/140814/joq2vwfc.jpg
So is just the grass bending away from the player position or is there something special going on, like foliage bouncing back and forth?
The material looks a bit expensive with that extra texture map, especially since you can do the same more simply:
https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?1795-Foliage-collision-foliage-bend-on-collision-In-engine-&p=91355&viewfull=1#post91355
Sry, i have not seen that you’ve already created a material. You Matsetup is from vertex shader instruction really better.
I tested both materials, the result is same.
Thanks , I think what many people are trying to do (including myself) is create something more dynamic, where the grass/foliage bounces back. I’m not sure how to handle an event like in a material, or if it needs to be handled elsewhere and sent to the material.
First post on board to thanks you all for your work The way you share your passion is fantastic! I’m lookin forward to do kind of grass, and as environment artist, i have absolutely no idea how to do I’m on a big scene, indoor/outdoor, and i’ll probably need a beautiful grass like those See you in couple of months, hoping a video will be released in the meantime =)
So first off, wanted to say .Thümmler you are amazing!
I am having troubles though creating the wind material/shader, I got the shader fully built but I am missing and not understanding the bottom left hand corner, stating that you need a RGB animation, how do i do ? Also where do I put that in my material/shader layout? Would it take the place of the texturesample which is purple?
Also is the current state of my scene just a practice for grass, my first time doing it. Please let me know what I am doing wrong thank you, you all kick ***!
