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Does the scale setting affect the vertical displacement (as well as the horizontal scaling)?One thing to remember is that parallax height maps push 'down' from the mesh or terrain surface. So any value less than 255,255,255 will push 'in' (this is why making the height map lighter will reduce it's effect, and reduce any imperfections from it).
Pity. That would be a handy way to control the ground displacement where necessary, such as immediately under the track. Of course, it would be at the cost of the depth effect, but at least would be under user control. An alternative is two versions of the ground texture - one with PBR and one without, but I suspect that the transition would still be an issue.The 'scale' control for ground textures does not appear to affect the maximum depth range of the parallax height map.
One thing to remember is that parallax height maps push 'down' from the mesh or terrain surface. So any value less than 255,255,255 will push 'in' (this is why making the height map lighter will reduce it's effect, and reduce any imperfections from it). If you only want to apply the height map to a specific portion of a texture, then make the rest of the texture pure white to bring it back out to the 'default' height. This also applies to ground textures; you can set a 'flat' height by making the height map white (or another value; RGB=128,128,128 should make it the same height as non PBR/parallax ground textures, but may introduce some distortion again).
In the case of terrain, to give an ability to have 'height' and 'depth', we actually raise the terrain by half the maximum parallax amount when PBR ground textures are painted onto a route.
If you only want to apply the height map to a specific portion of a texture, then make the rest of the texture pure white to bring it back out to the 'default' height.
If the terrain is raised by half the maximum parallax amount then the default height would be (128,128,128), not pure white. You suggest this later, but again refer to it as 'white' when it is actually mid grey.
I can easily understand the confusion though, because normal-alpha channel's effect depends on whether the PBR texture is on a 3D mesh or a groundtexture, as in the blue text of this little summary;
The distortion is specifically due to the POM (Parallax Occlusion Mapping, also called Parallax Height Maps in Trainz), not PBR itself.