Parallax Mapping

Demonstration of a cube with parallax mapping applied to it. The first cube shown is phong shaded with no extra effects. The second is using the same texture but with normal mapping and parallax mapping applied. Both cubes are geometrically identical

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Parallax
• Mapping
• Rendering
• Shaders
• Engine
• Development

[LordHines420]

tone down the specularity

[larskendall]

I agree that specularity is usually way too high on normal mapping in games, giving everything a plastic or wet look. I left it high for this tech demo just because it's easier to see the details. Just imagine that the rocks are made of plastic that just got rained on :)

[matieman77]

this is how i understand it, normal maps are maps of the normals, so that lighting/refection can give it more depth, and parallax mapping alters the texture in realtime so to create the illusion of depth from perspective, am i right?

[Kukident1]

@matieman77 it does not alter the texture in any way. What it does it it changes the position from where u sample from the texture, so effectively it moves the position of the pixels. This movement depends on the depth/height of a pixel and the view direction of the observer. However parallax mapping is a kind of weak approximation, there are better techniques using only texture samples, while for example displacement mapping generates actual new geometry detail when needed.

[ochiorbus]

does anyone have any tutorials for this?

[omgshrimpz]

Tesselation pretty much makes this obsolete.

[flamingarse1]

@larskendall i love that plastic look

[jonnycox001]

I feel like this is a really silly question, but I always assumed this was (from the comparison I saw in the video) bump-mapping. The description to this video is what I had in my head as a definition of bump-mapping. Can someone explain the difference? Thanks!

[hipe0]

to tone down the wet effect I use a specularity map created with my software photosculpt. See my profile for more info?

[Dark0Lord7]

@larskendall looks like wet rock. This effect is used in the game Alien Arena 2010 and produces a metallic look

[GameorX1122]

relief mapping beats parallax mapping cause in relief mapping you can look from the side and it should still have the effect

[solodarkwolf]

@larskendall i'm pretty sure it's because they create the spec maps from the normals and don't go through the process of editing them further most of the time, the norals themselves don't create specular

[TheIcemanModdeler]

The problem is the specular map, here they didnt use any specular map, i think they just used the default specular cuz it looks nicer.