Hi, I created a masked material for my haircards, and UE5’s Directional Light causes shadow noise and tingleling (tiny shiny noise on top of the hair masked material), I though the tingeling could be solved by changing Project Settings/anti-Aliasing Method from TSR to TAA… materials tingle less but looks worst… I use Masked for better results, because I tested Hair shading model and Translucent, but hair cards look kind of fake, also tested two sided foliage, same issue. Changing scalability settings (high to cinematic) has no impact on solving the masked material tingeling or shadow noise.
This is my material settings:
this is how shadows look like, on a default UE5 scene with a masked material:
Just updating my post: now I figured out the issue is stronger if I use dithering to my mask texture (master material), in order to make thinner hairs to look smoother in UE5, probably we won’t be able to use dithering in UE5, If I change to translucent material instead of masked, the issue is almost gone, but transparency quality is terrible for haircards… there is really a massive drop in quality…
I haven’t found a solution, I think it is a problem in Lumen and the new Anti-aliasing method mixed with dithering,
you can try to make your hairs thicker and they will tingle less, but even like that… you won’t reach a level of thickness to solve the issue, and your hairs are gonna look weird; If your hair mesh is separated from the actor mesh, you can turn off shadows, but… your game is gonna look poor quality, and if your hair is combined to the mesh, like my haircards for a beard… then no idea yet on how to turn off shadows just for that part of the mesh, trying to make it work from the material hasn’t worked for me…
But, propably the UE5 team will fix the issue before you finish your project, for now… masked materials are impossible to use in UE5 for haircards, but don’t forget, that some consoles also do not work with masked materials… so propably translucent materials is a good choise if you are planning to release lets say in Nintendo Switch… but, translucent materials for haircards just looks ugly… you loose all your detail and quality.
But also translucent materials mixed with the new anti-aliaisg method “Temporal Super Resolution” is a no-noh… and no… you get an awefull blure effect on the edge of the hairs, like ghosting…, you will have to go back to Temporal AA or FXAA and you wont be able to use Nanite… so now even for PC we will have this issue,
So, If I figure out another way to fix it, I always update my posts.
I have card hair problem too. I’ve been used hair shader. When i use path tracing instead of lumen, shadow is good and looks better. but path tracing is heavier than lumen, so i don’t want to use. Did you solve that shader issue? If you succeed, can i ask the solution?
The best option I have found to date is still to make hairs thicker, it will work with scalp hair, but… It won’t with face hair, like eyebrows and a bear, because if you make those hairs as thick, then your hairs will look unrealistic, so it’s a win and loose relationship, the other option is to use face hairs with translucent materials while using scalp hairs with masked materials, but then you also get unrealisitc face hairs… but honestly you could fake face hair shadows, so you can still use masked materials for the scalp hair, and face hair without shadows and fake those shadows.
Not a solution but a work around
anyways I do not use UE5 as much anymore, only for testings, because I’m done fighting with it, specially with the sequencer… I can’t even render a movie and most assets do not respond when you ask “in-game” wich is a tragedy because UE4 sequencer is incroyable… fabulous, and so as many others I already rolled back to UE4.26 (the most stable engine version to date) and If you think about it… not fighting with UE5 issues all the time, is time worthy… bacause in the end you do want to finish your projects on time, and UE4 is a great engine that almost never crashes, with perfect FPS and great features.
