Realtime Normal/Parallax/Relief Mapping Demo

[Squirrelly]

I just stumbled upon this. It is an interactive demo showcasing the differences between normal mapping, parallax mapping, and relief mapping. It enables you to switch between the three while viewing the same scene. From what I understand, you can also place your own diffuse textures with their corresponding normal map, and it will show you how it appears on different surfaces (cube, cylinder, etc). It was created by Fabio Policarpo, who is an author that has written many books about programming (mostly shaders). I found it rather useful.

http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/files/reliefmap4.zip

EDIT: Just realized his latest one doesn't include a cube. You can download the previous version here: http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/files/reliefmap3.zip, and then just copy the .P3D files into the latest version.

[Minos]

Sounds interesting, will give it a go asap.

[Zacker]

A low amount of depths they look fairly similar, but at high depth amounts relief mapping clearly looks better as it actually add more polygons. This also got a rather hard performance hit.

Parallax mapping looks slightly better than normal mapping and with this implentation the performance seems similar.

[Spellbinder]

The second link gave a 404

[edit] Ok somehow if i go here:

http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/relief/index.htm

and click the link for reliefmap3.zip i'm abail to download it allthough it is the exact same adress

So if the link in the first post fails try this.[/edit]

[edit2]hihihi i see now why

You put a , last in the adress, so this one is clickable

http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/files/reliefmap3.zip

[/edit2]

Spellbinder.

[PhilipK]

Interesting indeed.

Made a little test myself.

A nice little toy to play with really

Edit: Sorry for bumping but I just noticed this thread now so

[I3yG-MaK]

The second link gave a 404

[edit] Ok somehow if i go here:

http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/relief/index.htm

and click the link for reliefmap3.zip i'm abail to download it allthough it is the exact same adress

So if the link in the first post fails try this.[/edit]

[edit2]hihihi i see now why

You put a , last in the adress, so this one is clickable

http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/files/reliefmap3.zip

[/edit2]

Spellbinder.

Just delete de " , " at the end of ling (http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/files/reliefmap3.zip" , ")

[JynxDaddy]

Relief maps didn't work for me, nothing visible when in that mode.

I have a 9800xt, is this normal?

Parallax looks awesome though.

[Defrag]

Relief maps didn't work for me, nothing visible when in that mode.

I have a 9800xt, is this normal?

If it's a technique that involves using vertex texture fetching to perturb the actual geometry, it probably isn't supported on pre shader-model 3.0 cards. Traditionally, cards can use textures for effects (normal mapping etc) in pixel shaders only. Allowing vertex shaders to access textures was a new addition with shader model 3.0.