parallax mapping

[gavlig]

I've noticed that parallax mapping is listed in the engine features(in wiki). Is it a "to-do feature" or it's already implemented? Actually, it's really cool, but it means that a lot of stuff has to be remade or modified(like map textures and other props). Could you please give a screenshot or something just to see it in action? :) Is it applied to new models? And what about performance? What hardware do i need to play with parallax mapping on?

[velociostrich]

I'll try to answer some of those questions.

Is it a "to-do feature" or it's already implemented?

Yes, it is already implemented; the feature was part of XReal's renderer.

Is it applied to new models?

We don't yet have any models using it, no.

What hardware do i need to play with parallax mapping on?

Any decent, modern graphics card should be able to handle it.

[gavlig]

And what about new rant model? I bet he has some height maps on him :)

[Dandoombuggy]

height maps?

He has Normal, Diffuse, Spec and Glow..

I could render a displacement map for him perhaps, but that would only work if the engine supports tessellation and if your graphics card supports dx11.

[gavlig]

Ok, i might be wrong here, but doesn't parallax mapping work with common normal maps?

[Dandoombuggy]

I don't know much about parallax mapping so I don't know how they are used but I always thought it was for environment textures and static meshes. I doubt they'd work well with characters, I'd imagine they'd create tears/errors along the seams.

Although if anyone would like to give me more information about parallax mapping I'd love to learn =)

[velociostrich]

I could render a displacement map for him perhaps, but that would only work if the engine supports tessellation and if your graphics card supports dx11.

Afaik our engine does not support tessellation. Our renderer uses OpenGL, and I don't know if even OpenGL 4 has tessellation support (I really don't know much about the subject).

[Ishq]

Also, parallax mapping is somewhat expensive. I tried to parallax map for the floor for atcshd. Maybe I did it wrong, but the effect was quite profound and cut my FPS in half.

[gavlig]

OpenGL supports parallax, proofs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZojsR4zwjt8 http://www.opengl.org/registry/specs/AR ... shader.txt (or this tutorial :) http://www.songho.ca/opengl/gl_tessellation.html)
I was thinking about influence on the performance, that's why i asked about hardware :) Didn't know though that parallax is mostly used for static objects, and i didn't know, that parallax doesn't generate actual geometry, so i'm ok with normal maps for characters now :)

[Dandoombuggy]

http://wiki.polycount.com/ParallaxMap?a ... rallax+Map

It can create some pretty awesome effects, I especially like the cobblestone in crysis and the staircase in Mass Effect, hard to believe its a flat plane.