So, yeah... I've been doing some research because I want to try and update the textures to the Telvanni Tileset by Jon Satriani, and I was thinking about adding parallax mapping... what I've got so far is that you have to flip a switch on the mesh, and then the displacement map is just a greyscale heightmap in the alpha channel of the main texture file. Is that right? Is there a spiffy way to create such greyscale heigtmaps, like there are to make normal maps? Or do I have to do that myself (blech, work )?

Thanks in advance for the info

I believe they talk a bit about parallax mapping in the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/799551-how-to-make-textures-thread/ thread. It's an excellent thread, so if you haven't read it already, I highly recommend it.

About the only time a heightmap is simple is the brick wall, where you can get a good approximation with an inverted greyscale copy of the texture. But that's just a coincidence, because the mortar (the lowest part) is a lighter shade than the bricks in that case. Even then, dark spots on the bricks turn into bumps you don't want, so you have to go find them by hand and fix them.

There's no generic algorithm that can convert a texture to a heightmap without extra information, otherwise the renderer would do it with you having to provide one.

http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd171/misterPEB/ScreenShot49.jpg Quick and dirty, the heightmap was generated from the normal, so it's not really an accurate heightmap, but I managed to get something parallaxed. I'm VERY proude of myself. This should be fun

..could you up a video showing the effect please? thx :blink:

PS:
how do i add such a channel to my dds texture via gimp,
I already tried but failed poor noob.
first i delete any existing alpha channel, but then....?
and what switch do i have to set, assuming nifskope would be the tool??