Consequence of removing the "Pixel Depth Offset" of the material

[Nahor]

I used the “SM_Crypt_Floor_Concave” mesh in some places and added a plane with a water texture to add some puddles. Here is what I got with the original texture (with pixel depth):

I think it looks pretty nice (although the puddle is a bit too bright).

But this is what it looks like without the pixel depth:

(note also where the ground meets the door frame on the left)

Welcome to the '90s and their low-poly engines!

While the ground texture is not the same as the one for wall from the video, the difference is done through material instances. They share the same parent material. So fixing one affects the other.

[Nahor]

UE5.3 allows tessellation/displacement in nanite meshes. With that option, one can remove the pixel depth for correct lighting and still have the correct displacement.

That requires:

• enabling nanite tessellation in the project config file (as of UE5.3 that is, in future version of UE, there will be probably be better way to enable it, assuming it’s not even enabled by default)
• enabling nanite on the meshes
• modifying the master material to use the displacement (sample the exiting heightmap texture object and feed that to the displacement pin of the material output and remove the ParallaxOcclusionMapping node which is not needed anymore )

That tessellation is unofficial for now though. It will probably be official, albeit experimental, in UE5.4.