[updated for a224] parallax mapping

[Thomason1005]

This mod makes ground and detailobjects look more detailed by displacing the texture and making it look like it was actual 3d geometry
also the blending of textures is now based on their displacement map which looks more realistic (hopefully)

the rocks now break through the pebbles rather than blending softly

the ground an walls of the arena

red shards

Known bugs:
-on erodeau plateu the ground doesnt really work
-still some problems with the effect strength not being consistent over all objects, p.e. the ground in the arena is far deeper (about 2x) than the walls

Download - a224
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mosvd7t4ex1eq ... 4.zip?dl=0
*NOTE: it seems that og doesnt allow mods to overwrite the textures, so you might have to copy them into your main overgrowth data folder* (instead of the mods folder)

Download - old:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pusf828b5t7o32f/Data.zip?dl=0

a220 - a222
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gzls59fuoawy6 ... 0.zip?dl=0
installation for a220 is simply copying it into the data/mods folder, so that its data/mods/thomason1005sgraphicspack_a220
this new mod system is really cool, no more replacing files and you can disable them in the game menu *thumbs up*

[+] original post

so i picked up sth that i already tried about a year ago which is implementing parallax mapping aka deep bump mapping aka occlusion mapping for the overgrowth terrain

so for those who havent heard of it yet, its an advanced form of bump (/normal) mapping, it increases the detail on a lowpoly mesh (p.e. terrain) with a depth texture without needing the gpu power which actually having the detail as a mesh would require
reference:http://vvvv.org/sites/default/files/scr ... 763194.png
my current state:

flat terrain

displaced terrain

i also changed the blending of the terrain textures to now use the depth map, this should look really awesome with better textures

standard og texture blending

blending using the depth texture

[Constance]

Hot damn. Does Overgrowth support stuff like that already?
And I'm pretty sure this kinda stuff would be better applied to details on objects, but I'm curious on what you can do with terrain.

[Corpsey]

Can you show how this was done? It's pretty neat that the ground looks displaced even though it's just a blend.

[Thomason1005]

yeah i started with the terrain as it seemed easier to implement. for this to work i need a heightmap for the details(bright = higher, dark = lower). i used the alpha (transparency) channel of the (detailtexture) normal map as it wasnt used for anything. the characters p.e. already use this channel so id need a new texture which i cant do without david. (or replace the alpha on the normal map i dont even know what it does).

how it works is that basically instead of just displaying the texture color it looks up the height value of the pixel (here the normalmap's alpha channel) and displaces the pixel a bit. to avoid artifacts, this is done several times. the displacement is done away from the camera position so it looks as if it was taller. i hope that makes any sense.

the biggest problem is that all og models dont have this heightmap, aubrey would have to bake them probably as he has the high poly models. for now i used a black/white version of the color map, it looks quite decent

current state with actual textures

ill release the shader and the modified normal maps once i removed some issues.

[David]

Looking cool! I recently heard of this tool, which can supposedly infer adequate height maps based on normal map info: https://www.knaldtech.com/

[Thomason1005]

Looking cool! I recently heard of this tool, which can supposedly infer adequate height maps based on normal map info: https://www.knaldtech.com/

thx for the tip, sadly i only have my laptop currently so it wont work (it requires a opencl capable card).
im currently implementing the effect for objects which use detail textures.

the arena map

also i noticed that i scaled the textures down when adding the alpha channel which means i'll propably have to do that again

[Thomason1005]

Screenshots
im still working on a problem with scaled detail objects

[Weridoguy]

Would a tool such as Crazybump work? http://www.crazybump.com/

[rodeje25]

So the point of parallax mapping is make the ground look more 3d-y?

[Thomason1005]

Would a tool such as Crazybump work? http://www.crazybump.com/

yes this tool is actually pretty awesome thanks

depth maps created with crazybump magic

still has some rough edges but it looks better imo, i cranked up the depth and solved one problem with scaled objects

[Thomason1005]

So the point of parallax mapping is make the ground look more 3d-y?

yup. thats it

[Thomason1005]

solved problems with rotated and scaled objects, the effect strength still is not completely constant though.

also started optimizing the terrain parallax mapping

[rodeje25]

this looks awesome... DAVID! Y U NO IMPLEMENT THIS YET!

[Thomason1005]

increased the detail level i think it looks far better now

[Thomason1005]

i think the mod has reaches a presentable state so ive put a download in the first post

things i might work on in the future:
-having the shadows follow the topology rather than being flat
-putting more work into the depth textures (some are quite ugly dudeldududeldu)
-implementing displacement on the silhouette of the objects (idk if i can do that)