3dsmax - giving texture thickness?

cdavidson

hey guys just wondering if its possible to give a texture some thickness.. as you can see with the op map on this plane it kinda looks paper thin.

is there a way to make it look thicker in the texture process ? or should i just model it as a simpler box version of the grate.

example below.

cheers chaps.

cdavidson

surely its still going to look flat at an angle tho?

am guessing its just a case of havin to make it more than just 1 plane instead of using an op map.

Ace-Angel

Unless the Camera is going up close and personal on the grates (as in you'll zoom through them), Perna's suggestion is the best one.

If you're exporting it later on to a game engine like UDK, you can use a Fresnel function to give a sharp fall-off around the slanted edges, faking even more depth.

cdavidson

ah ok. ta for the info

Mark Dygert

What is with the recent rash of people thinking you can fake some cavernous inner details with a flat plane and a normal map? This is like the 4th one this week...

cdavidson

easy now lads. it was a simple question. i thought maybe there was a way to give it a small bit of thickness without adding geo. i got my answer and it was the one i was expecting.

Justin Meisse

you can sometimes fake thickness by double stacking the alpha planes: stack a plane on top of another, offset by enough that the player sees a bit of parallaxing - I don't know how convincing it is with normal mapped assets.

Ace-Angel

Mark Dygert wrote: »

What is with the recent rash of people thinking you can fake some cavernous inner details with a flat plane and a normal map? This is like the 4th one this week...

I would say Shark Week has something to do with it.

Now that this reminds me, in UDK and ShaderFX one could simply create a self-occluded parallax mapping shader for the asset, but the cost to render/processes it will be huge, so I don't thing it will be beneficial at all.

r_fletch_r

Justin_Meisse wrote: »

you can sometimes fake thickness by double stacking the alpha planes: stack a plane on top of another, offset by enough that the player sees a bit of parallaxing - I don't know how convincing it is with normal mapped assets.

probably cheaper to just model it in this case no?

JacqueChoi

I think a parallax map might be able to fake it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_mapping


Particularly Parallax Occlusion Mapping.



It's used more in PC development, than console development.