Rendering Shaders wanting.

I am experimenting with adding Translucency to my asset packs of foliage. When I select Translucency in the shader, most of the map nodes disappear, No Masks, No Normals, No Roughness etc etc. In other platforms where I sell my meshes etc, I need a special shader to enable translucency, which I cannot include in my packs, as I am a seller and they will be exposed… I mean, never mind all my meshes and textures etc…

I have yet to find a shader set that gives me control over Translucency, along with all the usual set of Maps/Textures, and would give me control over wind settings per material, that I can include in my packs for sale.

I am no scripter, so no code solutions please. I can try the odd blueprint, drag and drop stuff.

Anyone know of a solution?

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After setting translucent, also select

That’s how to get all those pins back, but it’s mainly for water. Use ‘two sided foliage’ if it’s actually for foliage, it has some translucency built in

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Hi ClockworkOcean,

That information and link certainly open the door to a better result. Thank you for taking the time to respond.

I have experimented with the Unreal shader functions in the past and saw some promising results.

However I have seen/used better shaders in other platforms, that look much closer to the start of the YouTube movie on the Unreal shader. Pity as I always considered Unreals shaders to be good quality out of the box.

The results I get from the Pine tree branches gives me the effect of partial transparency washing out the saturation and the pine needs ‘ghost’ sometimes blurring during camera movement.

, it could be that the angle of the view against the thin masked image, is just too fine to render/show.

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Well, I don’t think you get translucency with Pine in real life, so… :blush:

It does just look a bit overexposed there.

I don’t suppose you know of any tutorials of how to implement Transmissions in Unreal or where to find information?

I did find some ‘loosely’ defined information on the Unreal Docs… but it changed to another topic halfway through LOL…

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What sort of transmissions?

I can only relate to my experiences in Unity on that… I have looked at docs, videos etc of Unreal, but they only cover the lighting aspects.

In Unity, I was using a shader that enables Transmission features. I was able to overlay/blend a colour over a texture. In this instance it was a Tree Bark. Adjusting the ‘texture influence’ and strength, I could apply the colour to the chosen contrast range of the bark texture, adding say green, to simulate the ilk’s of moss or lichen growth in certain regions of the mesh.

The same technique was possible to introduce rust particles to a mesh with a metal texture, controls were that the rust only show in selected regions of the mesh, not not uniform like a texture would do… it was similar to a decal, without all the need for projectors etc. Using 'instances of the material, I could make each model unique.

The use of a ‘splatter map’ would create something akin to a substance output, but using the method described, the method was not uniform across all UVs the map was shown on. I suspect it possibly used/introduced some sort of vertex painting using the texture as a control and a strength slider to determine the overall coverage.

I’ll grab a screenshot next time I am using that particular project to show the effect.

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Ok, I think the only things like that in the engine are

  1. Decals ( as you said )

  2. Vertex painting ( also )

  3. Coding something into the material using a height lerp, or similar

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Screenshots of the material/shader in action…

The overlay colour blend is the Details Colour Picker, the two sliders determine how much of the texture influences the pattern and the height slider determines how far up the trunk the pattern is spread from ground level.

This could be useful for say Swamp vegetation that are subject to tidal waters. Sea defences, Or metal that rust has climbed up the structure.
In both instances, I used the same Texture for both the Diffuse/ColourMap and the Details texture. I haven’t tried yet, but a change of texture in that slot, may give the ability to create new patterns.

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Yes, the UE equivalent of this is coding extra functionality in the material with height lerps

But there’s a lot of different ways of doing it. It really depends on your skill level in the material editor.

That is very useful information that would allow me to make each tree individual at a unique level.

I’ll let you know on my progress…

Thank you again, for your knowledge and expertise.

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You can combine it with something like

to know how far up the tree you are.

There is also something called ‘custom primitive data’, which will allow you to actually set the material different for each tree

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Height Lerp Mode

I tried this one, but couldn’t get the same effect as in the video… all mesh painter would do was swap the texture for the colour, no Normal or height control, nadda…

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I finally got the Height Lerp solution working. I did this by leaving the 1Minus node in place, which is deleted in the video.

I also created another version of a material which does the same thing but in a different way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHQLq1mMeh8 that also worked well.

I shall research brush creation, as the default one is a bit crude, the edges seem harsh, to refine the process.

I want to give these materials to buyers of my products (Foliage and Flora), so they can blend then better with their own terrains, just by adding the texture sets of the underlying surfaces.

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After many hours of experimentation of the different types of Material solutions, I came up with a solution of my own. Here are some shots taken of the progress, awaiting final adjustments and functions. The only drawback, is that setting Nanites on the Tree mesh, tends to tear the mesh apart if the amplification goes beyond say 5. At that setting the displacement is hardly noticeable.

It is not finished yet, I still need to match the Moss textures in both materials, but I can feel it getting much closer.
I am also going to try different Gen meshes, to see if it is the construction of the tree meshes that are causing them to tear apart, to improve the Displacement of both the Bark and the Moss definition.

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Ah, but you’ve branched off ( pun ) into another area now, maybe this is more applicable

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Hi there,

Yes I have been looking at Blended materials and it maybe that is something I would add once I am confident that my customers even want that function. They may already have that function on their landscape materials.

So far, I have created a ‘dome’ mesh, that can be Nanite supported, that sits at the base of the tree, that can have the same master material as a variant, but has the facility to use the same textures as the landscape. This has the added benefits of only needing that Landscape Layer for other things, and the landscape doesn’t have to have nanites supported. In addition the Contrast etc will also match that of the Tree applied Vertex Paint, and not suffer the washed out effects of a Landscape Shader, as seen in the picture above. That used a bespoke Variant of the Trees Material, that matches, on the ‘dome’ mesh, that also has Tessellation/nanites enabled.

The Dome can be scaled in height, to bring the Moss/Snow etc upwards, without having to cause a lot of unwanted stretching on the tessellation.

As you say, Blending would also be preferable, and is the next step on the workflow. Finding a solution that combines all these features, is difficult. I have studied many YT videos on the individual techniques, but will need to find a way to ‘blend’ them all together into one material. As this is perhaps the first Material of this type I have attempted, I find it a steep learning curve, where to use Multiply/Add/Lerp sections together.

In addition I am also hand painting Height Maps to make sure the correct parts of the moss end up the correct shape, many methods, including the awesome Materialize, cannot seem to cope with that.

I am also trying the same with Fallen Leaves, although, even using Occlusion Mapping doesn’t cope with leaf thickness, I may use geometry. I will also look into ‘Cloth’ physics on a mesh, so it can be multi-use as opposed to bespoke for every tree.

I already have the ability to grow Ivy around the base and upwards, that can be an Optional Mesh.

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