LogInGleb Alexandrov and Adam Janz revealed a neat trick.
By default, Eevee doesn't handle translucency the same way as Cycles, which can make leaves and plants appear flat and unrealistic. Gleb Alexandrov, whose tutorials we've featured multiple times on 80 Level, recently shared a video demonstrating a simple trick to fake translucency in Eevee, making vegetation look much more convincing.
In the comments of Gleb's tutorial, 3D Artist Adam Janz suggested an alternative method for faking translucency:
"We actually used to have a convenient setting called Subsurface Translucency in the Material Settings, but this was removed in Eevee Next. However, I think it's possible to still get decent translucency effects by disabling Transmission on the Principled Shader, and turning up the Subsurface Weight to 1 while adjusting the Scale to taste.
Plugging in a Value node into the Thickness pin on the Material Output allows for additional fine-tuning (as well as the two Thickness options found under the Material's Settings > Surface). I found changing the Viewport Pixel Size to 1 on the Render tab helps minimize Subsurface dithering artifacts in the 3D viewport."
Gleb gave it a try and was impressed with the results. A tutorial covering this second approach is also in the works.
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