Hello, is there a known bug on the UE 5 versions about scene texture: world normals?
Current buggy versions I have are 5.03 , 5.1.1 , and 5.2.0
It seems like mesh vertex normals or smoothing groups are ignored when using scene texture: world normals on deferred decal materials. So the result is ended up as faceted meshes.
You can see the dfference between 4.27 and 5.0.3. problem persists on newer UE 5 releases as well (5.11 and 5.2.0).
You can check the images by this facebook post. The first image with faceted normals is from 5.0.3, and the smooth ones are from 4.27.
I made a bug report 2 times with following case numbers months ago but it doesn’t seem to be added on bug tracking system. Do you know a work around on UE5 releases about this matter?
My bug report case numbers are as follows:
Case # 00487252 - reported on October 2022
Case # 00496703 - reported on November 2022
So, I ran into this too, and it looks like it’s intentional, unfortunately.
When using Dbuffer decals, it computes normals using depth reprojection . I’ll report back if I come up with a decent way to fix this, but it’ll will most likely involve source and/or shader edits.
Custom Decal Responses
If you allow the underlying material to handle its own decal response, then its smooth vertex and pixel normals are accessible.
You could use a scene capture to get the world normal and then sample the render target instead. I’d expect this to be much more expensive, but then you can still handle all the decal responses in the decal material itself if you really want.
I’d go with option 1 personally.
This video shows the basics of how to use custom decal responses.
