Example of parallax mapping. The walls are textures with parallax maps. Screenshot taken from one of the base examples of the opensource Irrlicht 3d engine.

Parallax mapping (also called offset mapping or virtual displacement mapping) is an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures in 3D rendering applications such as video games. To the end user, this means that textures such as stone walls, will have more apparent depth and thus greater realism with less of an influence on the performance of the simulation. Parallax mapping was introduced by Tomomichi Kaneko et al^[1] in 2001. Irrlicht (IPA: ) is an open source 3D engine written in C++. It is cross-platform, officially running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, though due to its open nature there have been ports to other systems including the Xbox, PlayStation Portable, and SymbianOS in development. ... A sphere without bump mapping. ... Normal mapping used to re-detail simplified meshes. ... An image created by using POV-Ray 3. ... Computer and video games redirects here. ... Spherical texture mapping Texture mapping is a method, pioneered by Edwin Catmull, of adding detail, surface texture, or colour to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. ... This article is about the year. ...

Parallax mapping is implemented by displacing the texture coordinates at a point on the rendered polygon by a function of the view angle in tangent space (the angle relative to the surface normal) and the value of the height map at that point. At steeper view angles the texture coordinates are displaced more, and so give the illusion of depth due to parallax effects as the view changes. For other uses, see Parallax (disambiguation). ...

Parallax mapping described by Kaneko is a single step process that does not account for occlusion. Subsequent enhancements have been made to the algorithm incorporating iterative approaches to allow for occlusion and accurate silhouette rendering^[2].

Steep parallax mapping

Steep parallax mapping is one name for the class of algorithms that trace rays against heightfields. The idea is to walk along a ray that has entered the heightfield's volume, finding the intersection point of the ray with the heightfield. This closest intersection is what part of the heightfield is truly visible. Relief mapping is another common name for these techniques.

Interval mapping improves on the usual binary search done in relief mapping by creating a line between known inside and outside points and choosing the next sample point by intersecting this line with a ray, rather than using the midpoint as in a traditional binary search.

List of video games that feature parallax mapping

Here is a list of video games that feature parallax mapping. Only seventh generation video game consoles and high-end PCs are capable of rendering parallax mapping in-game, so all of the following games are considered 'next-gen' games.

• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory: PC version, Shader Model 3.0
• Halo 3: Bungie Studios
• Perfect Dark Zero (adds depth to ground rocks/walls)
• Kameo (adds depth to walls and bricks)
• F.E.A.R (adds depth to decals and certain walls)
• The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion (depth to stone walls)
• Grand Theft Auto IV (bullet holes and wall cracks from collisions)
• Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
• BioShock: PC version (some floors and other surfaces)
• Crysis / CryEngine 2: PC-only (many small pebbles that are normally 2D textures are rendered in 3D when in DX10 mode (or CFG hack))

For the Nine Inch Nails release, see Head Like a Hole. ... Bungie is an American video game developer founded in May 1991 under the name Bungie Software Products Corporation (more popularly shortened to Bungie Software) by two undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, Alex Seropian and Jason Jones. ... Perfect Dark Zero is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rare and published by Microsoft exclusively for the Xbox 360 video game console. ... Rares promotional rendering of Kameo. ... F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Monolith Productions. ... Grand Theft Auto IV (also known as GTA IV and GTA 4) is an upcoming sandbox-style action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North. ... Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (AoC) is a low fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) in development by Funcom for PC and, possibly, Xbox 360. ... BioShock is a first-person shooter[10] video game by 2K Boston/2K Australia (previously Irrational Games),[11] designed by Ken Levine. ... This article is about the game. ...

See also

• Parallax

For other uses, see Parallax (disambiguation). ...

External links

• Comparison from the Irrlicht Engine: With Parallax mapping vs. Without Parallax mapping
• Parallax mapping implementation in DirectX, forum topic
• Parallax Mapped Bullet Holes - Details the algorithm used for F.E.A.R. style bullet holes.
• Interval Mapping
• Parallax Mapping with Offset Limiting
• Steep Parallax Mapping

Irrlicht (IPA: ) is an open source 3D engine written in C++. It is cross-platform, officially running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, though due to its open nature there have been ports to other systems including the Xbox, PlayStation Portable, and SymbianOS in development. ...

References