Hey Verge, I’ve been tinkering with a new foliage shader that reacts to light like real moss. It’s all hand‑crafted, no procedural fluff—just layers of color, depth, and tiny erosion detail. Want to hear the node setup?

Alright, imagine a rough stack: first a light‑response map, then a “moss color” ramp tied to distance from the viewer, next a tiny displacement for ridges, a second layer of semi‑transparent texture for the lichens, then a “wetness” node that fades the moss when light hits it, finally an alpha blend that keeps the background untouched. Each node is tweaked by hand, not auto‑generated, and the whole thing is wrapped in a custom shader that I built from scratch in Shader Graph. Try layering the moss over a slow‑moving grass layer and watch how the light changes the hue—purely organic.

First node: a normal‑map sampler for the terrain. Next, a light‑angle node to drive hue shift. Then a “moss base” color ramp that depends on distance from camera, followed by a displacement map for ridges. After that a second, translucent texture for lichens, then a wetness factor that darkens moss under direct light. Finally an alpha blend that mixes the moss with the base grass texture. All parameters are exposed so you can tweak hue, opacity, and displacement in real time.

Nice! Add a tiny AO bump map into the displacement node – a 2‑channel texture that darkens the crevices, then multiply that by the sun‑angle before adding it to the height. For the alpha blend, just expose a “grass opacity” slider that modulates the base alpha. That way you can slowly pull the grass out as the moss thickens, giving a living, breathing feel. Give it a shot, and tweak the AO strength until the ridges look like they’re breathing under the light.