Description

Specular highlights on non-Nanite meshes with a clearcoat material that has the second normal enabled will disappear at certain view angles. This can be worked around by adding a constant node to the Anisotropy pin and setting it to a non-zero value (this workaround does not work for Nanite meshes). A second issue is that normals flatten out in shaded areas as the material roughness is increased to 1 (compared to a default lit material with the same normal map).

Steps to Reproduce
  • Enable Clear Coat Second Normal in the project settings.
  • Create a simple clear coat material that writes a normal map to the clear coat bottom normal (following the documentation at [Link Removed])
  • Assign the material to a (non-Nanite) sphere mesh in a level with a directional light
  • Rotate around the object and observe the specular highlights disappear when viewing the mesh from some angles
  • Increase the roughness and observe the bottom layer flattens out substantially in the shadow side. (See the screenshots with the different roughness/clearcoat parameter combinations)

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Unresolved
ComponentUE - Graphics Features
Affects Versions5.5.4
CreatedMay 21, 2025
UpdatedMay 22, 2025
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