Animated gif shows the problem: the horizontal stairs (static meshes) on the ground are flickering and blinking when character take away in distance! Setting different values for “Bounds Scale” of the problem static mesh not correct the problem: When close the camera to the stairs they stops to blink, but when take away from them they start flickering. See the picture:
Hello Tsvetkov,
Does the static mesh you are using for the flickering pieces have LOD’s?
What looks to be happening is the engine is trying to render all of these pieces, which appear close together at a far distance, at the highest level of detail.
If you could provide me with a screenshot of your Static Mesh editor settings in your reply, that could help me identify where the issue could be occurring?
Thank you,
Hello thank you so much for your respond. I attached my model in fbx plus two screenshots of its Static Mesh editor settings. Just import the model, compile the shaders and you will see the flickering or blinking the stairs (on the ground) when you are away from them.
Hey again Tsvetkov,
I took a look at your mesh and there are a couple of factors which are contributing to the flickering you are seeing. The first one, and probably the main contribution, is the lack of smoothing groups on your model. The second factor is the original scale of the mesh upon import, which is extremely small. This forces you to scale it up by a large amount which can cause stretching and artifacts to appear.
My suggestion would be to break this model apart and model out your walkway as a separate mesh from your ground. You could honestly model out a small arrangement of wooden steps and manually place them in your level. This way you get a more unique looking arrangement and you would no longer see the flickering.
Let me know if these suggestions worked or if you have further questions.
Regards,
Hello I tried both factors smoothing group and normal scale, but nothing helps. The problem is very deeply in UE I think. Here is my model with normal scale and with smoothing groups. The third option- to break the model into parts only will complicate the process instead to simplify it.
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Hey ,
With the way you have your mesh set up all on one model, and the at which you are viewing the wooden walkway the flickering will always be there. The ‘flickering’ you are seeing is actually something that also happens in real life if you are viewing a collection of objects that are parallel and close to one another and viewed at an angle. Another term for this is called the ‘screen door’ effect or the moire pattern. Documentation on this effect can be found following the link below, which will go into great detail about the ‘Moire’ pattern.
Moire Pattern
This effect can be reduced by changing the approach you are using when modeling your mesh. The first point of interest would be to edit the UV map of the mesh. Having a clean unwrap when modeling can make a world of difference when using lightmaps and baked lighting. If you need help on how to improve your Unwraps or your Static Meshes follow the documentation provided below.
Static Mesh Pipeline
Unwrapping UVs for Lightmaps
As I mentioned before, you could completely avoid having to do this if you simply modeled out a single 2x4 piece of wood to use as your walkway piece and applied that to a new ground mesh/plane.
Another approach you could take, which would save you polygons and reduce the visual flickering your are seeing, would be to create the walkway pieces as a normal map. This way you still get the small amount of raised detail from the normal and you avoid creating geometry entirely.
The final contributing factor to the flickering is the Anti-Aliasing. You can turn this setting off within your ‘Post Process Volume’, which should reduce the flickering, but the edges of your objects will appear more jagged. If you have any other questions or need help let me know.
Cheers,
Hello
I attached the model containing only two parts- ground and stairs.
The moire pattern (screen door) in real life is occurred in very big distance from the actor and objects, but in my model the distance is very short.
I tested and third option- split the model into two parts (ground and stairs), but the result is the same.
Also set different textures on the stairs but without effect.
About Anti-Aliasing when changed in PostProcessVolume the “AA Method” from TemoralAA to FFAA or to None, flickering/blinking is gone only when camera is not in move, but in static position.
Something interesting: when walk against the sun there are flickering/blinking of the stairs, but when walk in opposite direction (the sun is behind you) there are no flickering/blinking.
So the conclusion is that something with the shadows of the stairs is not correct.
Thank you so much for your time and support.
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The moire pattern is dependent on parallel lines viewed at a specific , whereas distance does not play as huge a role. As mentioned before, this is something that you cannot get rid of entirely, but you can reduce it using the suggestions I mentioned.
Spacing apart your walkway pieces will help as well as using a normal map instead of actual geometry. I wanted to show you this does not only appear in the engine, but in the external modeling program as well.
Regards,
