Heyhey, guys! :]
I want to create some renders in UE5 of a beetle with a groom asset I’ve been working on for a while. As main light source, I want to use my favorite HDRI because it sets up a good lighting scene by itself and creates some really nice reflections on some parts of the asset (the screenshots here aren’t fully representative, I still have to tweak a couple things regarding brightness).
However, if I do that, I get extremely splotchy, thick shadows for individual hairs when seen from anywhere but extremely close-up. Even at just a medium distance, it’s pretty bad and it gets worse if you zoom out more (all the black splotchs on its pronotum/throat shield and elytra/cover wings are caused by this).
When seen more close-up, it’s alright-ish - still a bit too intense for my liking but far from as bad as it is when further zoomed out:
At this point I’d even be okay with turning the shadows off completely for the hairs if it means I don’t get those splotches. However, none of the available options for the groom assets have made any difference whatsoever, including turning shadow cast completely off.
This issue doesn’t appear to happen when I use other light sources like directional lights, rect lights etc. It seems to be solely caused by the SkyLight. Even if I were to put the asset into a lighting scene with more light sources, this issue would still persist since I’d still use a SkyLight (even though it wouldn’t be quite a visible because of the other light sources).
What could be causing this and how do I fix it?
Thank you in advance! :]
Leo