translucency lit particles

Ever since i started using ue4 this has been an issue for me but i finally want to get to the bottom of it.

Why doesn’t particle self shadowing work the way it looks in the examples?
namely this:

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/images/Engine/Rendering/Overview/self_shadow_1.jpg

For whatever reason it appears that lighting doesnt actually go through the particle but rather just shades the whole thing when its viewed from behind.
I dont think I have seen anybody get anything close for that matter either. Does this even exist in the engine?

front:

back:

side:

This my material:

I tried following the example from this post here:

However it doesn’t really clear up anything for me, still having the same issue of particles being completely shadowed from behind as well as wrong camera angle shadowing.

it was mentioned in the post that this module in the picture below was supposed to correct the camera angle issue but it does not appear to change anything no matter what number i put into any of the fields: