Torque feature that could possibly be used.

[Yellowbelly]

I\'ve been going around games and places looking at textures, noticing which ones are good and bad according to lighting and such (mainly in HL2) and then I go to other games like Infiltration where there is weapon collision. I\'ve noticed in Infiltration that you can\'t really tell how close you are to an object or wall and I always wondered how to fix this.

I downloaded the TSE demos, links given by reno , and I saw all the cool new features. One feature that struck me was how a texture can be stretched in all directions and then it goes back to normal.

I was wondering if this feature could be used in TTR: Torque to have actual Depth Perception with walls and objects. The way that it would work is that you back up and the texture stretches the farther you go back. Once you get closer, it shrinks back at a higher resolution than when you stepped far back. Is this possible to work with or would it take forever to do? If it was possible, would it work well?

[Reno]

hmmm. interesting idea.
Though if we figure in all the paralax, bump, displacement, and normal maps on objects, we really shouldnt need to distort the textures to maintain quality(paralax mapping distorts the texture to give an appearance of a 3 demensional feel to a 2d surface) and the other stuff would make for a more realistic feel on walls and such as well, and it could potentially cause issues with those effects if we play with the sizes of walls(if i understand you correctly)
some things we could potentially do this for, but if we keep generally high rest textures(and all the other listed effects) that sshouldnt be nessicary.

[joeb]

you mean like tri-linear filtering?

[Yellowbelly]

I dunno really what that is. You know on the demo, with that cube and there was a number on it with a weird texture that was stretching and shrinking? That\'s what I\'m talking about.

What\'s this paralax thing? Sounds interesting. Are there any examples I could look at?

[Reno]

i know which one you are talking about now
(basically, in the TSE demo, you had a texture on a cube there the texture would grow and shrink dynamically, which is what Yellowbelly suggested to immitate depth perception)
Paralax mapping is almost like bump mapping, but instead of playing with lighting effects to give the impression of a 3 dimesional surface, it distorts the surface\'s texture in such a way(with applies lighting effects im most cases as well) to give a better feel that it is actually a 3 dimensional surface(often times, you could substitue displacement mapping and get almost the same effects, but more so, at hte expense of processing power as displacement mapping actually alters the Geometry of the surface)

hehe, can you tell ive researced this stuff?

[The_Punisher]

Good shit reno, good shit...

[Yellowbelly]

So paralax does the same type thing as my suggestion would, wouldn\'t it?

[SgtH3nry3]

Hi, I\'m SgtH3nry3, I\'m new to this forum and game.
I never played the mod though, but this is what I want to say:

Paralax mapping has the same effect as bumpmapping.

It basically applies a 2nd \"depth\" texture over an existing texture.

In n00b mode:
Some that looks flat (normal), can look 3D (with bumpmapping).
But it actually is flat, and costs less processing power than adding \"real depth\".

[Reno]

Yes, it has the same \"effect\" however, it looks far better, and far more convincing than bump mapping.
What Paralax mapping actually does, is it takes your 2d texture, and then distorts it in such a way(according a bump map like sub texture which acts like a height map)as to appear to give it more 3d properties. one such way to do it also ties lighting in directly, and you can self shadow your paralax maps.

There have been many implementations of paralax mapping, some just a prettier bump map method, while other\'s will completely convince you that it\'s a 3d surface.

case in point, this is the TSE shader at work:


as you can see, it looks like it\'s actually made of polygonal geometry, but it\'s really just a shader that distorts the textures in such a way as to give that impression.
Also, because we can tack on multiple shaders to a single texture, we could have paralax maps for stones like that, and then apply a specular map to *just* the stones, so they relect the light, but the gravel in between the stones remains dark, and doesnt reflect the light.

so while you had the general idea SgtH3nry3, it wasnt completely correct

[SgtH3nry3]

Reno Wrote:so while you had the general idea SgtH3nry3, it wasnt completely correct

Yeah, but paralax mapping will have it\'s full feeling when the perspective is moving.
Then you really notice the depth, but if your perspective is static, you won\'t tell the difference between regular mapping and paralax mapping.

You do need Shader Model 2.0 / Shader Model 3.0 right?