Softer Plant Cards in Blender

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Give foliage cards softer shading with Blender’s Data Transfer modifier. A written guide with screenshots and a before-and-after comparison. The written chapter and quiz are free. No account needed.

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Softer Plant Cards in Blender. Before on the left, after on the right.

Plant cards tend to look flat and angular. Not at all what you expect from the soft, organic feel in nature. I'll show you a quick technique you can set up in Blender (and export to your preferred game engine). This written tutorial is meant to act as a simple guide you can reference in the future.

Set up the helper

Select your foliage-card object and use Shade Smooth.
Add a UV Sphere and position it inside the foliage.
Scale it to roughly match the plant’s overall shape.
Use Shade Smooth on the sphere.
Set its viewport display to Wire and disable its render visibility.

Position and scale the sphere inside the foliage

Object Properties → Viewport Display → Display As → Wire

Disable the sphere’s render visibility using its camera icon

This sphere will provide the normal shading direction for the cards.

The helper in Wire display, with the foliage visible around it

Transfer the normals

Select the foliage-card object and add a Data Transfer modifier. Use these settings:

Setting	Value
Source	Your helper sphere
Face Corner Data	Enabled
Data type	Custom Normals
Mapping	Nearest Face Interpolated
Mix Mode	Replace
Mix Factor	1.000

Transfer Custom Normals from the sphere using Nearest Face Interpolated

This transfers smooth shading directions from the sphere to the cards. The two meshes do not need matching topology.

The separate Face Data checkbox is also enabled in this screenshot. You only need the highlighted Face Corner Data settings to transfer Custom Normals.

Refine and finish

View the plant under angled lighting and toggle the modifier to compare before and after.

If you're using the latest Blender (I'm using 5.2 in this tutorial), you can also enable "Thin Wall" subsurface effect, which gives the leaves that paper-thin look that allows the sun to partially pass through. Just check "Thin Wall" in the Principled BSDF shader, and crank Subsurface weight up to 1.

Principled BSDF: Thin Wall enabled and Subsurface Weight set to 1.000

Too rounded? Reshape the helper or lower the Mix Factor.
Patchy shading? Check that the helper is smooth shaded and closely fits the foliage.
Want several distinct foliage clumps? Use separate helpers and transfers for those clusters.

Once you're happy, apply the modifier in Object Mode. You can then remove the helper from the finished asset.

If you ever want to remove this custom shading in the future, just select the foliage > go to Data properties > Geometry Data > click "Clear Custom Normals Data."

Remove stored custom normals in Data Properties → Geometry Data

You can clearly see how much softer the leaves look in both the final render, and even in solid view in the 3D viewport.

Before normal transfer — Drag the divider to compare the shading. You can also use the arrow keys.

After normal transfer — Drag the divider to compare the shading. You can also use the arrow keys.

After: transferred normals in Solid view

This little trick is used all the time in games and animation!

When exporting, preserve the custom normals and make sure the destination application imports them instead of recalculating them.

Try the free quiz in the next chapter to see how much you retained. No account needed.

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About the instructor

Riley Brown

Using Blender since 2008. I've worked as department manager for the 3D department at a global furniture company, and I've freelanced with 3D my entire career across a wide range of industries: product visualization, pre-vis on film production, and environment and prop art for games. I'm a contributor to Blender and was most recently the producer behind many major Blender Guru tutorials and courses, before stepping away in 2026.

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