Raytracing of displaced features.

Started by James Bond, December 24, 2006, 05:17:13 AM

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James Bond

Hello,

I'm just curious if TG2 can do raytracing of displaced features (i.e. if they can show in reflections). And also if displacements can cast correct shadows when using raytraced shadows. I'm under linux now so i can't check it out myself. (and when i rebooted into windows on prev. weekend, it keept crashing until i lost the patience).

Congratulations with the release by the way, i like user interface.

Oshyan

Yes, displacements are shown in reflections, although currently they may be somewhat simplified. For a mirror effect this may be an issue, but in most cases the water has a certain amount of roughness that makes it all but impossible to tell.

Displacements should certainly cast correct shadows (although not soft shadows), and you don't need to turn on "ray-traced shadows" for it to work. Those settings (in Clouds and Atmosphere nodes) are actually only useful for when you want the terrain to cast a shadow either into the atmosphere or onto clouds (depending on where you enable the setting). Under normal circumstances displacement will produce correct shadows by default. The entire terrain shape is created through displacement so this is a fundamental necessity.

- Oshyan

James Bond

#2
That's quite cool. I know it is seriously difficult to raytrace displacement based things, when displacements is not along some simple known direction (e.g. vertical-only displacements on planetary sphere are easy to raytrace, but arbitrary direction ones isnt).