Parallax Mapping with dynamic Shadows

magisterrivus · Post by **magisterrivus** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 7:53 am

Hi all there.

After unsuccessfully trying to solve this problem, i was advised to post it in the Bug reports forum.

Here's the link to the original thread

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?p=85853

Bye

magisterrivus · Post by **magisterrivus** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 8:35 pm

Hello,

could somebody be so kind and test if this program shows the same bug (render artifacts) on his/her machine? I want to be sure it's not a driver issue (I recently had problem with driver updates, so i only do that if it is reaaally important...as it is for Irrlicht

)

http://www.megaupload.com/de/?d=P9P13LN9

Everything is compiled, you only have to put the most recent (1.1) Irrlicht.dll into the folder where the ge.exe is located. Btw, it's compiled under VS2005, hopefully there are no errors because of missing runtime libraries (read about that somewhere on the forum

)

Thanks in advance

PS:
If somebody can't download from megaupload, i'll up it again at a server of your choice

magisterrivus · Post by **magisterrivus** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:35 pm

I just used the code from Tutorial 11, and added a ShadowVolumeSceneNode to the room, et voila, the same artifacts occur.
When adding the ShadowVolumeSceneNode only to the earthmodel, everything is fine.

Btw, a friend tried my program, and these artifacts are also visible on his machine, so it's not a driver issue. In OpenGL these artifacts are even more visible.

magisterrivus · Post by **magisterrivus** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 3:33 pm

Strange enough nobody seems to have this problems (no answers), i found out that when using the 3ds format instead of obj i get the following error:

Error: Parallax map renderer only supports vertices of type EVT_TANGENTS

Whatever, i accept that problem to be never solved

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:29 pm

That last post is not a problem, about the "Parallax map renderer only supporting vertices of type EVT_TANGENTS"

This is because Parallax Mapping requires Tangent and Binormal information for each vertex. You need to load your model, and the use the smgr->meshManipulator->createMeshWithTangents function. Then create a mesh node using the returned mesh from above function and setting that nodes material to EMT_PARALLAX_MAP_* .

I still don't know about your other problem, I use a different parallax mapping technique with my own custom shader.

magisterrivus · Post by **magisterrivus** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:02 pm

Hi Spintz *honored*,

i didn't changed my code. Well, ok, i changed the fileextension in my sourcecode (obj to 3ds).
I don't think this should raise a problem in Irrlicht

.

I read in the beginners forum, that someone else has this problem too.
I assume it has something to do with the new version, also i didn't tried it with the 1.0 engine.

Whatever, thanks for your reply *wink*

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:54 pm

as far as I know, .obj and .3ds do not load up with tangents and binormals. So you need to create them, and use a mesh with that format. Becuase the shader looks for 3 texture coords from a mesh for parallax mapping. The first is the actual texture coord( float2 ), the 2nd is the tangent( float3 ) and the 3rd is the binormal( float3 ). If you're mesh is not supplying these values to the shader, it can't work.

Falcon · Post by **Falcon** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:33 am

Is there a file format that supports the Tangent Mesh data needed for Paralax mapping?

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 8:57 am

Yes, I fixed obj yesterday. Was easier than I thought. So with either bump or map_bump you get the necessary meshbuffer type and a proper normal map. Oh, btw, I use parallax_solid as the type, maybe we should make this configurable via some attribute to choose from normal map and parallax map. You can also change this manually, of course.

Falcon · Post by **Falcon** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:40 am

Ah yes, so you did! I hadn't looked at your code changes close enough. That solved another problem for me as well, which is a pleasant surprise. Thanks again!

Since I am trying to use Parallax, it is good as default for me, but as your first impression, it might be good as an optional parameter to the getMesh() function?

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:22 am

No, it won't be a parameter, because too many options might arise with mesh loaders. There's an attribute based mechanism which passes parameters to the device (or scene manager?) and the loaders can access them there. It's not widely used right now, but we might enhance its usage in the future.
BTW: I also fixed the 3ds stuff (seems that the intensity percentage is there and I only met some other problems last time, or some very old 3ds files). The loader now also generates the tangents such that parallax maps are also supported for 3ds (although the non-smoothed faces will make this a little unpleasant).

mjoselli · Post by **mjoselli** » Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:36 pm

Is there a file format that supports the Tangent Mesh data needed for Paralax mapping in the 1.4 sdk?

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 12:05 am

No, you have to create it manually. Follow example 11 in order to convert the mesh and textures as needed.