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Question Parallax Mapping on HDRP Unity Terrain?

Discussion in 'High Definition Render Pipeline' started by frostwizard4_unity, May 30, 2023.

  1. frostwizard4_unity

    frostwizard4_unity

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2023
    Posts:
    3
    Alright, so I'm building a VR game in HDRP, and Parallax mapping on surfaces has been a lifesaver, the detail I get from it is magnificent, and I want to know how I can create a material that I can assign to the unity terrain with POM. I saw a post from a couple of years ago where someone said to use a Layered Material and assign a height map using that, but they don't go into details and I can't get it to work, it just bugs out the terrain rendering. Any ideas? I have very minimal knowledge on writing shaders, I can use shader graph a bit however, it's how I made a POM shader in URP before switching to HDRP.
     
  2. EricFFG

    EricFFG

    Joined:
    May 10, 2021
    Posts:
    183
    You can't get POM on unity terrain
    You can make a custom terrain shader or use just simple meshes for a terrain or you can get Microsplat at added complexity
     
  3. HIBIKI_entertainment

    HIBIKI_entertainment

    Joined:
    Dec 4, 2018
    Posts:
    594
    @frostwizard4_unity, before jumping into third party assets.

    You can use layered lit shaders with non instanced terrain, this allows full POM and other Tess modes, but with some caveats.

    - Limited to 4 terrain layers per terrain tile
    - Can't use terrain instancing (same with Microsplat which extends from this) which could be a function you require.
    - potentially heavier than a typical terrain lit shader.

    Potentially though, if it fits the requirements of your project, it could be worth experimenting with.

    Similarly if you were to write or visually build a custom HDRP terrain shader, you would be going down the same route anyway, as it's currently the only way to support it in HDRP. Custom terrain shader shader graph has been in Unity's product board for some time now, but along with terrain tools, it shows promise that, as old as the terrain system is, the terrain system ideas are not being abandoned
     
  4. frostwizard4_unity

    frostwizard4_unity

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2023
    Posts:
    3
    I have the Microsplat POM module, but I find it to be lacking even on the best circumstances, I think I might need to increase the POM maximum height, but every star has to align for it to work well. In my experience so far, Tessellation works much better, with a little less performance