Shadows on creates messy artefacts with alphas

Hi there,

This is a very recent problem for us that's never happened before today.

I noticed all these artefacts around tress and foliage. I couldn't figure out what was causing it but then as I was clicking through different quality levels I saw that on the lower ones the artefacts disappeared.

Then I realised that it's with shadows on that the artefacts appear. I don't know how this is causing a problem. Only way I can fix myself is to turn shadows off or turn shadow distance down to 2.

Hope someone has a better fix than me lol. You can see in the attached image, the left side is with shadows off and right side they're on.

I'm using 5.3.4f1

Thanks for reading!

 

Anyone? I've noticed that this doesn't happen with a dedicated gfx card. Just happens with integrated....

 

I haven't seen this before, but I have a guess as to what's happening. I think your leaves have some invisible pixels that are rendered invisible by setting their alpha to 0 in the shader (because of your texture). Those invisible pixels still record their depth unless you "discard" them in the shader. In the shader you can write "if (outputColor.a < 0.05) discard;", or if you're using a standard unity shader, use a "cutout" or "fade" mode (not transparent mode, as it does not discard invisible pixels).

I'm thinking if you don't discard invisible pixels, shadows will still be drawn where they would be.

If that's not working, what shader are you using?

 

Hi there, thanks for the reply.

I'm using the standard shader. Transparency is set to cut out. The problem goes away if I use Legacy/Transparent/Cutout/Diffuse shader but everything else is using Standard shader so it kinda makes the trees have a different look/feel to everything else.

It's really bugging me because I've been working on this a long time and it's only since Monday this is happening.