Relief texture mapping

Abstract

We present an extension to texture mapping that supports the representation of 3-D surface details and view motion parallax. The results are correct for viewpoints that are static or moving, far away or nearby. Our approach is very simple: a relief texture (texture extended with an orthogonal displacement per texel) is mapped onto a polygon using a two-step process: First, it is converted into an ordinary texture using a surprisingly simple 1-D forward transform. The resulting texture is then mapped onto the polygon using standard texture mapping. The 1-D warping functions work in texture coordinates to handle the parallax and visibility changes that result from the 3-D shape of the displacement surface. The subsequent texture-mapping operation handles the transformation from texture to screen coordinates.