Is it possible to use both Parallax Occlusion Mapping and World Aligned Texture?

KayHuang

I like the outcome of using Parallax Occlusion Mapping. However, I also want to make the height map world aligned. Is there a way to use both nodes on the height map? Or, is there an alternative way to achieve a great bump map effect and world aligned?

Below are some references captures:

(Using Parallax Occlusion Mapping)

(Using World Aligned Texture)

(Not sure how to connect)

poopipe

short answer is no

longer answer is:

both nodes generate UVs internally and thus do not take UVs as input

As to whether it's possible or not... I don't think I've ever seen it done - parallax mapping in general doesn't do well outside of planar surfaces so while I suspect it could "work" I would expect a lot of artefacting as soon as you strayed away from axis aligned geometry.

the cost would be pretty horrendous in any case - POM requires quite a few texture samples to look decent and you'd be tripling that with triplanar mapping.

What I have seen done in actual games is triplanar mapped displacement with (and without) tessellation - that basically just works

KayHuang

https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2778856#Comment_2778856

Thank you for the detailed explanation! I didn't know those things about POM and learned something new today! I definitely will take a look at triplanar.

Sirbear99

So i've found something called "WorldPosition" that you can use in order to get the same effect of the WorldAlignedTexture but i think it only works on 2 sides of the cube/rectangle/wall whatever you wanna call it, basiacly you get the Absolute World Position, multiply by something that will be how much it tiles (0.01 is 1:1 i think) and you connect it into "UVs (V2)" of the ParalaxOcculusionMapping, it only works on the top and bottom of the cube but you can rotate it so yeah... hope this helps. 

poopipe

You're generating UVs in world space when you do that

only 2 components of the world space position vector are used, and by default that will be XY. 
 if you put a component mask before it goes into the POM node you will be able to select which orientation it is working in.  eg. choose GB rather than RG and it should tile in the YZ vertical plane rather than the XY horizontal plane