VR Textures

craig_jj

Hey guys,
I am doing a negotiated masters and i am building a VR environment. For one of my Units i am doing a research project and it is based on getting the best detail out of textures as normals look flat in VR. so i did a simple test looking at Normals, Bump offset, Parallax and Tessellation displacement. I would like some advice on what you guys think what is the best way to get depth from textures. The texture wall looks a bit off as i made everything in Photoshop. For me Bump offset and Parallax looks the best and i will only be using this on building textures and things around that size anything smaller i will use normals only. The first image is normal then bump, parallax and tessellation and for the walls its only bump and parallax. For the wall pics it goes bump offset and then parallax.  I am rather rusty on this part of the pipeline as i focus mainly on animation and i followed 3D motion tutorial displacement vs parallax.  Here is the map i did my test in i am using version 4.14  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9CMZPGQYzFbOHdyWnFHU0xFWGc

rohMizuno

parallax and displacement should work fine with VR, in terms of the look of it, as for normal map, I keep listening to ppl saying it does not work great but in my experience I never had a major problem. The biggest problem in your case is the lack of a directional light. Shadows are what will sell the bumpiness of your shader, creating a Ambient Occlusion map out of you height will also be of great help.

Also, I would avoid converting a picture to normal/height using Photoshop unless you really understand how to it using such tool, otherwise you will have clumpy results all the time, try using crazybump or bit2material (highly recommend this one, for its low price and awesome utilities) for those tasks.

craig_jj

Thank you for the advice and information. I am looking at tutorials for understanding lighting and creating a good setup for when i do my environment. I only used Photoshop for this test but i mainly will be creating assets and using Xnormal and Substance to create all my maps.