Parallax or Relief Mapping

[Lonely Soldier]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading a bit about some new texture mapping techniques, parallax mapping and relief mapping (though I'm not sure how new the latter is).

The effects which can be achieved are rather stunning, and I was wondering if Rome's engine has scope for the inclusion of such technology in mods.

I realise that Rome's engine is largely hard coded, so I don't expect much.

Does anyone have any info on this?

Thanks,
Lonely Soldier

[Ilsamir Lord]

Does anyone know about this?

[PROMETHEUS]

Any picture of this type of mapping?

[Lonely Soldier]

Ok, here are some examples:

Steep Parallax mapping:
http://graphics.cs.brown.edu/games/SteepParallax/compare.jpg

Relief Mapping
The picture on the left is using normal maps, the picture on the right is using relief maps. Pay particular attention to the pipes and stuff on the right of the pictures:
https://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3585/shot2normal1cd.th.jpg (https://img152.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot2normal1cd.jpg)https://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1895/shot2relief2qp.th.jpg (https://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot2relief2qp.jpg)

[PROMETHEUS]

Definetly better , how is obtained this 3d effect? , becouse I suppose aren't actuial extrusions of the poligon ...

[Lonely Soldier]

Yeah, it's all on a single polygon. The technique is incredibly complicated, I really don't understand it myself. But I have a program, originally designed for the Doom 3 engine, which will convert normal maps to depth maps, so perhaps that could be of some use. It really comes down to the shaders though, which have to be coded in, and the engine may be hardcoded in that respect.

edit - I've just found a program (here (http://66.70.170.53/Ryan/nrmphoto/nrmphoto.html)) that will convert tgas to displacement maps, which are required for parallax mapping. I tried it out on a stone wall texture for Rome:

Here is the original texture, converted to a jpeg for size reasons:
https://img147.imageshack.us/img147/2353/stonewall4wp.th.jpg (https://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=stonewall4wp.jpg)
And here is the displacement map:
https://img147.imageshack.us/img147/8915/stonewalldisplacementmap4iv.th.jpg (https://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=stonewalldisplacementmap4iv.jpg)

Now, essentially, the wall, when viewed from various angles, would have bricks that jutted out, that is assuming that the right shaders were working, which I doubt they would be.

This is probably meaningless to a lot of people :D I know it is to me! I believe displacement mapping is another name for parallax mapping though. I still have no idea on relief mapping. But I have tried to use the Doom3 engine normal2depth.exe converter but to no avail.

Is there anyone here who knows a lot about textures and shaders?

Here are some sites on normal maps and such. We are going to need normal maps to create depth maps to use for Relief maps :P . That is unless we use parallax mapping, though relief looks better in my opinion.
http://members.shaw.ca/jimht03/normal.html - this appears to be for a specific program though.

http://www.monitorstudios.com/bcloward/tutorials_normal_maps1.html