parallax mapping on non-terrain
by Duion · in Torque 3D Beginner · 05/12/2013 (5:16 am) · 6 replies
Is there a proper tutorial about parallax on non-terrain materials? I cannot get it to work properly, it seems to work different than the parallax on terrains. First nothing happened at all, when I used the slider in the material editor, after some time I realized he only recognizes changes after a restart. So when I add the material maps, I first have to restart and only then the parallax slider works. But only certain formats work, for now only png and dds with dxt3 worked for me.
Also then the parallax is very ugly, then I noticed that I have to invert the heighmap, because somehow on materials the parallax is inverted and the settings for saturation, brightness and such have to be somehow different, but I don't know how. The slider itself is pretty useless and unbalanced, it goes from 0 to 1 but only values from 0.01 to maybe 0.05 are needed and the lowest setting you can do is 0.014 after that he jumps to 0.028 and 0.042, so you have exactly 3 values to chose in the working range, that likely do not fit your needs and if you want to enter numbers by hand, it does not work.
Also then the parallax is very ugly, then I noticed that I have to invert the heighmap, because somehow on materials the parallax is inverted and the settings for saturation, brightness and such have to be somehow different, but I don't know how. The slider itself is pretty useless and unbalanced, it goes from 0 to 1 but only values from 0.01 to maybe 0.05 are needed and the lowest setting you can do is 0.014 after that he jumps to 0.028 and 0.042, so you have exactly 3 values to chose in the working range, that likely do not fit your needs and if you want to enter numbers by hand, it does not work.
About the author
http://www.duion.com - Human Paradigm Specialist
#2
The inversion might be related to the terrain height-map inversion issue - maybe it was loading all "heightmaps" inverted....
05/14/2013 (8:10 am)
I am not sure it was ever intended to be used anywhere except the terrain, or maybe the terrain use case just got all of the focus. For most objects the baked in material bump maps might have been considered sufficient. I'm guessing here - maybe Scott Burns or Tom Spillman would know more.The inversion might be related to the terrain height-map inversion issue - maybe it was loading all "heightmaps" inverted....
#3
Now one can argue about what is "sufficient" but in very close up detail parallax offers big improvements.
You can get it to work in Torque, but in a very poor way.
05/14/2013 (9:04 am)
Other engines achieve stunning effects with that, for example this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcAsJdo7dMENow one can argue about what is "sufficient" but in very close up detail parallax offers big improvements.
You can get it to work in Torque, but in a very poor way.
#4
05/14/2013 (1:00 pm)
I understand - I was just pointing out that there may have been a reason for the incomplete implementation. It would be great to get it fixed and working correctly!
#5
05/14/2013 (1:05 pm)
The problem is you have to build things around a function and if the function gets changed later you maybe will have to redesign your whole work, for example inverting all textures. So I want to make sure how it works before converting all textures for the use with it.
#6
05/14/2013 (6:44 pm)
I understand that, too. I don't know how it works - Perhaps Scott or Tom could help.... 
Duion