Ok i’m used to using RTP plugin in unity. its a shader thats has all the bells a whistles.
it has POM self shadowing parallax on each of the 4 layers. Performance isn’t too bad considering, but to my surprise unreal engine by default does not have a POM material/shader for terrains.
So it got me thinking that maybe it’s not really used in unreal games or maybe pom is only used on one layer out of the 4 or something like that.
So my main question is… is it a bad idea to use self shadowing POM on terrains?
also why isn’t there some optimized terrain shaders to choose from?
Is it common for game studios to use material editor to make terrain shaders in unreal engine?
Also I’ve been looking at frostbites battlefield 1 terrain and its the best I’ve seen yet. it looks like they’re used POM on each layer, what do you think?
This is not to complain about unreal engine I’m just curious.
It also surprises me that Epic hasn’t made a set of optimized terrain shaders because they’ve invested a lot of time in post processing effects and have delivered that AAA quality so why not on terrain shaders? terrains are pretty much used in most games.
I know theres a tutorial on POM event though its not true pom method and I know there’s one available made by a community member by the way.
Do you guys use pom on your terrain?
is it worth it?
In UE4 things are revolving around creating your own shader
Majority of shaders are created that way, though you are not limited to using material editor only.
Yes
It is situational. UE4 landscape favors tessellation and probably you should be looking at it over POM.
Now, about limitations of POM on terrain, provided that you are not stepping outside of material editor:
Realistically, it is practicable to blend only up to 4 layers in the same place with POM.
If you are using terrain layer painting system, you inevitably will have some cross-layer texture drift.
For the time being, self-shadowing is implementable for one light only(typically, one directional light in the scene) with some degree of fakery, and it does not respond correctly to the light, though it still looks good enough to be used.
“UE4 landscape favors tessellation and probably you should be looking at it over POM.”
do you think there’s better performance using tessellation vs POM?
Pretty situational again. It primary depends on two factors:
Overall triangle count in the scene. The higher it gets, the more costly tessellation gets.
Output resolution. As it raises, tessellation will start outperforming POM.
There is a row of secondary factors, such as targeted platforms and hardware, how much screen space is terrain occupying, the least possible angle between terrain and view direction, desired Anti-Aliasing method and a few others.
For me, POM outperforms tessellation considerably on a typical 1080p resolution, but I am using customized shading model for terrain with POM-specific optimizations.
Bottom-line is: If you are only working with what the engine has to offer out of the box, go for tess.