Soft Velvet Moss Rocks UE5
After spending the first hour being amazed at the moss in Horizon: Forbidden West I decided to try and make my own velvety moss rocks in UE5.
They seemed to use small foliage cards, much like you would place grass on a landscape but much smaller and tightly packed.
Here's a link to the texture files I created for this: https://drive.filen.io/f/b9676f1e-0f2f-4d59-880d-67c66f891fd5#1Age9QnIw97TU4D2KQ8Gmoc17iNt8Wlv
Video showing the final effect in UE5.1
Paint a mask on the top of your rock, blur the edges sevral times and turn on fibremesh.
Here's the settings I used for the example but some experimentation could produce different styles to suit your needs.
Accept the fibremesh and with that subtool selected then apply FibresUV to map each card on top of the othes in 0-1 UV space.
Export the whole thing making sure the rock and the moss meshes will have their own material slots for Unreal.
The moss material is very simple. 2-sided foliage with the colour plugged into the SSS. The alpha mask goes through a DitherTemporalAA node to soften the edges.
Final effect in UE5.1 using foliage cards.
