Dark, Unwanted Shadows Between 'leaves' when Rendering in Cycles I am hoping someone can help me with this situation. I am very new to rendering and texturing in blender and have not so surprisingly come across an issue that is preventing further progress.
I am trying to render in cycles a mesh that I have created with a particles system for some low-poly leaves. For some reason, when I render in cycles, there are very dark portions of these leaves that I can't seem to lighten, no matter what light settings I play with.  I thought that it would be due to ambient occlusion, but no matter what settings I change it doesn't make any difference.
I think it would be easiest for someone to see my blend file, It is here -
I'm posting this just so I can post the pic. You can try this setup and see if it works. It should have a good effect, yet it doesn't seem to do much when I look at it. However, as you can see from the photo, the texture is missing in your blend file so everything is pink. This might affect how the setup is working on my end. Have a try on your project and let me know if it helps.