Displacement mapping: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:40, 14 February 2011

Revision as of 03:50, 8 March 2011

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True micropolygon renderers have always been able to do what sub-pixel-displacement achieved only recently, but at a higher quality and in arbitrary displacement directions.

Recent developments seem to indicate that some of the renderers whichthat use sub-pixel displacement move towards supporting higher level geometry too. As the vendors of these renderers are likely to keep using the term sub-pixel displacement, this will probably lead to more obfuscation of what displacement mapping really stands for, in [[3D computer graphics]].

In reference to Microsoft's proprietary [[High Level Shader Language]], displacement mapping can be interpreted as a kind of "vertex-texture mapping" where the values of the [[texture map]] do not alter pixel colors (as is much more common), but instead change the position of vertices. Unlike bump, normal and parallax mapping, all of which can be said to "fake" the behavior of displacement mapping, in this way a genuinely ''rough'' surface can be produced from a texture. It has to be used in conjunction with adaptive [[tessellation]] techniques (that increases the number of rendered polygons according to current viewing settings) to produce highly detailed meshes.