parallax mapping with silhouette clipping shader node

Hi all, i post this file for the community, this shader was made by zelouille and post on blenderclan many years ago. The shader was a bit complex, I just modify them for obtaining silhouette clipping, but it work very well in viewport. good blending all and thanks to martinsh and mokazon for parallax and all other features in the future GE.:slight_smile:



parallax with silhouette clipping.blend.zip (1.36 MB)

3 Likes

Looks pretty nice! Is it significantly slower to render than just normal maps?

When I try it out, Blender crashes before the UI or viewport loads.

Holy… THAT LOOKS AWESOME!! At first i just thought it was a simple normal map but it’s like realtime displacement! Very good job indeed!!

***what version of blender did you use?
try to append only the materials or object in a new file.

Wow that’s awesome! I’ve been waiting for this for a while, I just never thought that it would come in the form of a node based material that works inside of the viewport… I wish all of the cool shaders and materials we have on this forum were node based, it’s such a smart way to create a filter!

That does look really cool. The objects seem to disappear at certain angles - I’m not sure if that’s intentional? But good work, nonetheless!


thanks, yes it’s intentional, if you want objects not disappear at certain angles, disconnect the silhouette clipping node or change the value input to 2 and -2. This node transform the UV information (parallax uv output) to pure black and white, it’s just a parallax alpha map.
Silhouette clipping work very well on plane object but not on other objects.I prepare a demo file with another type of texture.

Silhouette clipping, increase the pos. decrease the neg. in the nodes and that problem goes away

I tried to mess around with it but objects disappear regardless of clipping settings or being removed, here is a vid to clarify. Still awesome progress though! Works perfect in 3D view, just not BGE

If you extrude a pillar from the wall (so it is only one object but still overlaps) it seems to never disappear so it is only other objects over each other having the issue in BGE,


wow this is great! and an awesome effect!

can we get a video tutorial on how to set it up too?

Holy God! Thats cool.I need to test performance now.

Not sure if this makes sense, but I changes this in the materials settings while in blender game mode, not render mode

Select an object with the parallax material on it -> Go to the materials setting -> Game Settings (under materials menu) -> Set “Alpha Blend” to Alpha Clip (normally set to Opaque) Seems to work ok with all objects with parallax material and other objects. Please let me know if this actually did something lol, I just kept messing with things until the issue I had stopped =P


Hi bstn3268, thanks, you’re right alpha clip is the good setting,now it work correctly in viewport and ge,
in clip Alpha otherwise known as binary alpha, each pixel renders either completely opaque (when alpha > 0.5) or completely transparent (alpha <= 0.5).
Sorry for my bad postfile,I shall correct that for future demofile.

Your welcome, I wouldn’t call it a bad post file, just one setting off =P This truly made my day yesterday! I have been waiting for real parallax mapping for so long =P Thanks for sharing it

This was the best I could do before it lol, a bunch of planes on top of each other. Not too pretty but kind of worked =P

Here is a quick explanation of how I used it so far, kind of a video tutorial except I am still learning all the pieces of this awesome node tree =)

Binary, I mentioned you in there and linked to here to make sure you get credit!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1uhy_vrUFo

Sorry for the lack of HD, tried google plus hangouts for recording lol…480p :confused:

incredible effect!

You are genius!

im on an OLD CRAPPY laptop(ati radeon) and it still runns:eek: