surely when the ability to create vertices on the card comes than all this(Relief Mapping) will be rendered obsolete?
im not knocking this technique i believe its brilliant
They’re not, they’re all full of artefacts, whether it’s hard edged shadows, aliasing, pixelation from shadow maps, environment mapping approximations…the list is endless, and will be for the forseable future.
That’s a graphics programmer talking, not someone viewing an image. Graphics programmers are trained to break down an image into its fundamental “effects” as well as recognize artifacts on a conscious level. Most normal people are not. They don’t understand any of these concepts. They simply see an image that is “near” reality, but off in a way that they are not able to fully describe.
So, if there are so many artefacts already, why do you think this point is relevant to relief mapping particularly?
As FPO pointed out, it could just be bad source data, but it’s the way that the effect looks so good, but right next to a perfectly viable detailed surface can be an artifact. Like, you see a surface as being clearly rough, but change your perspective (or look down a hallway), and you can see that the surface is really just flat and some kind of trick is being employed to convince you otherwise. Or you notice how a shadow interacts incorrectly with a surface that obviously looks rough.
Bump mapping doesn’t have this problem because it doesn’t look good enough to. Standard bump mapping doesn’t bring out the detail to the degree that relief mapping can, so there isn’t the disjunction of near-reality next to a visual artifact. Or, even worse, seeing an object that looks highly detailed from one angle and moving to another where it looks (compared to the original angle) incredibly fake. It creates tension in the world; an inconsistency of experience that people aren’t used to dealing with. Bump mapping may not look as good as relief mapping, but it is, at least, consistent in its appearance.
Originally posted by zed:
surely when the ability to create vertices on the card comes than all this(Relief Mapping) will be rendered obsolete?
im not knocking this technique i believe its brilliant
I think that’s fairly obvious. Bumpmapping will be thrown away eventually.
I find that the D3 graphics are a joke in some ways. Walls are huge polygons and the texture has large objects in it.
If your bumpmaps are for slight bumps, no need for displacement techniques and bump shadows.
It creates tension in the world; an inconsistency of experience that people aren’t used to dealing with.
I don’t think that this concern is justified in this particular case. Game worlds are rife with textures that attempt to create the illusion of geometric depth where none exists. This technique simply seeks to enhance that illusion. That there are artifacts associated with the end result in no way distinguishes it from other attempts at manufacturing depth through the use of any number of ad hoc techniques, save that this one is among the more effective of those attempted thus far. My concern, really, is the performance hit; and as you suggest, that the artists understand the implications of adding excessive “depth” to the textures.
Needless to say, an improper application of this–and indeed any–effect could result in less that pleasing/consistent results. But visual anomalies are part and parcel of the gaming experience; they’re part of a celebrated tradition embodying the best of intentions, and I think the (gaming) public understands that. I think the average gamer is only too eager to suspend disbelief , especially when there are kingdoms to rule or untold treasures in them hills!
Well, I think Korval’s point is that this technique is so good, and contributes so much to the realism of the scene, that when the illusion is shattered it subtracts more from the immersive experience than it originally added. Sort of, every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, I suppose.
As I said though, I believe this is true of other effects - a good example is the water in Far Cry, where it looks stunning until you see the artifact created by the fact that the reflection is mirrored around a perfect plane, but the texture is mapped onto a displaced plane.
I imagine we all agree though, that this is a stunning technique, and certainly worth adding to our renderers.