As you can see in this one, there is a weird banding artifact. This is present in Metahuman project that I got from marketplace by Epic. Even custom subsurface profile materials also have the same behaviour.
Now in this one, it’s a completely different project, not setup for metahumans. Here you can see, when using subsurface profile, it does not giving the light bleeding effect at all. Like when you point the light from behind the object, the darker side would light up as light goes through it. That doesn’t happen here. So I brought in a Metahuman character and naturally it asked me to turn on few plugins and project settings so I did, yet it has the same problem as well.
So if I use a Metahuman project, I get the light pass through effect but with artifacts, and If I use personal project then I get shadow and no light pass through effect. This problem is present on Unreal 5.3 and 5.4. I have not tested if it’s the same in previous versions or not as my project requires 5.4. The reason I tested for 5.3 is to double check is 5.4 has any issues.
ok, so I found the solution. SS profile is a screen space effect which is why it won’t work if the light is behind the character. But if you still want to make it bleed through the thin areas like ears. then turn on the transmission in source light’s settings.
As for Metahuman project, I still don’t know why it has the banding artifact.
I have other problem with SSS:
I just started using SS profile and first it didn’t seem to work at all but then I realized it needs A LOT more light intensity than plain Subsurface.
I get nice results with it but noise is a bit problem, do you (or anyone) know how to reduce noise without quality loss? (Lumen).
I have tried many settings but nothing seems to fix that. I’m using Ultra Dynamic Sky for lighting but it is the separate Point Light inside a hollow SSS material object causes noise. Still as UDS handles the whole lighting it may be some UDS setting. I will ask in UDS Discord but any ideas are welcome
