Painting fallen leaves in Foliage mode?

[Bumper]

Hello all,

I would very much like to be able to "paint" some fallen leaves among my scene. I have successfully made and implemented a decal actor of fallen leaves but would like to be able to distribute them along the lines of foliage in the foliage editor.

Sooo, instead I imported a plane and put a fallen-leaves material on it (BLEND_Translucent, MLM_Phong) and then dropped that static object into Foliage. I now able to paint those fallen-leaves planes all around my scene. Cool!

Unfortunately however I am getting a great deal of Z-fighting in-game.

Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Am I on the wrong tack for distributing my leaves, or is it a matter of material settings to prevent my sorting issue?


Thank you very much for your time.
-Bumper

[CorvaenOboros]

Recommend using BLEND_Masked instead , and having the opacity map , connected to Opacity_Masked in the material ,
this will eliminate a lot of the sorting issues that Translucency has , although still has the same performance cost around the translucent areas.
to remedy this be sure to cut the plane as close as possible to the actual opaque leaf parts , adding more geo if needed is more cost efficient, and can then make the leaves be curved /curled.
would be interested to see some screenshots

[Bumper]

Thanks CorvaenOboros! The leaves now work in *some* spots. There are some places on my Landscape-Terrain that the leaves still blip out. I wonder if I should move the planes pivot down just a touch in max to raise the plane up a bit above the ground as I think I'm probably getting co-planar surfaces or some jive.

Good idea on the cut-outs. I'll try to post a shot when I get it sorted (heh) out.

Thanks again!

*EDIT* Booya! Moving the pivot down worked like a charm.

[ThePriest909]

Why don't you use decal actors instead? It worths the performance saving cost.

[Bumper]

Why don't you use decal actors instead? It worths the performance saving cost.

Experimenting really. Looking for a way to "paint" my leaves along the landscape. Performance issues duly noted.