Unreal Engine 5 - Parallax Occlusion Mapping Tutorial

[@SpaceShrimp]

this is by far the best tutorial for POM. And I've watched a ton of them. thumbs up !

[@alexanderbevangreco3286]

I would like to thank you for this tutorial. It was really helpful and you explained not only how to build the set up, but also what everything does and how to fix some issues. I subscribed and I hope you keep making tutorials for UE5 because in my experience, very few can explain as clearly as you did.

[@chaotyc]

Thanks for the breakdown and explanations!

[@M4R1093]

Amazing tutorial! Thanks man, you saved me so many hours of work...

[@ngtansang254]

One of the best Unreal Engine channel out here!

[@stunthumb]

Nice tutorial, we need more like this that go into actual details. One thing that I wanted to mention, is that you can also use ambient occlusion for the shadow rendering, like treat the shadow output from the parallax as light blocking rather than directly affecting the diffuse colour.

[@fluffykitty7480]

I'm not even a game designer or anything like that, and I'm still watching this stuff

[@Glowbox3D]

Very useful and straight-forward tutorial, thank you.

[@tdah6804]

You are a full blown legend, amount of your knowledge is staggering! This is about 10th video I've watched and if I was to preach the truth I would spam every video with superlatives, THANK YOU!!!

[@virtuary]

Awesome tutorial thank you! Question for anyone and sry if it's dumb, but how do you scale down the texture in this POM scenario? I noticed the usual UV and tiling options I have with other basic materials, and those parameter capabilities, are different or are occupied by a specific node in this POM setup. I'm trying to apply a dirt texture and on my mesh rather than making it smaller it overlays it huge, like one twig stretching over an entire mountain ugly. How do we tile and scale in this rig?

[@THEcucufate]

You can add a TextureCoordinate to your material rig, and plug that into UVs under the big POM main node, Apply and Save, and then increase the numbers in the Details pane.

[@virtuary]

@@THEcucufate Thank YOUUUUUU!! LIfesaver!

[@bernhardhelbling3412]

Excellent explanation!

[@Max_Stupa]

Great explanation! +1 subscriber!

[@RomasNoreika]

This is great RenderBucket.

[@Manta2526]

So good, thank you very much!

[@parthchotaliya3468]

great tutorial buddy, superb explanation thanks for sharing such valuable knowledge. Keep pushing brother!!!

[@aaeriam]

Perfect timing with this tutorial. I just started looking at how to get a similar effect with my snow material in UE5. Very clear and well-spoken on all points! 👍

[@HammerdownProtocol]

Wow! Thanks for this.

[@snook-official]

Can this be used with landscape layer blend materials? Also does it look right from all angles as you never moved the camera around the plane in the video?

[@vladimirkhadyko8304]

"Dynamic inset shadow" checkbox in asset properties will fix weird self shadowing effect when PDO enabled. Unfortunately idk how much expensive that feature is.

[@jotacoxabagaray]

Wonderful tutorial.

[@gil6970]

Thanks for this tutorial. If you don’t mind these questions. I’m making a gladiator arena game. Would you recommend this over displacement for brick and painted walls And I think this will work perfect for the ground/sand for the arena rather than displacement right. Thank you again

[@renderbucket]

Yeah totally suitable case for POM, would work great for Brick Walls and Ground or Sand, just only put it on walls that really benefit from it though. And its going to be more efficient in most cases than Displacement. Games going all the way back to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion used POM or some flavor of Bump Offset for a lot of the dungeon walls and stuff as well.

[@Arshitectural]

thank you Sir it was perfect!

[@ilhabela3d]

Amazing tutorial. Thank you

[@prinzbach]

Amazing video! Thanks a ton!

[@MakcumVFXUA]

bro, u are pro! :) thank u

[@Chinesestud]

Hi great tutorial for POM. I was just wondering what is the differnece between using POM and the Nanite displacement map since it is back in the 5.3 version?

[@PerryButler]

Big difference, Nanite displaces the mesh and creates real bumps, this method fakes it with lighting tricks and works with non-Nanite meshes such as procedural. The results can sometimes look the same though.

[@Starblendet]

Is there a way to create a height texture for Bridge surfaces?

[@jayantbhatt007]

Hi dude always enjoy your content alot but wish you would have explained it in more detail like how it works the physics behind it. Thanks :)

[@cripwalkisfun]

really helpful, thanks. future video idea; is there a way to fake translucent materials for hair groom? (e.g. a glass or translucent plastic texture to mimic fibre optic cables) i am new to UE5 but as far as I can tell, translucency doesn't work with hair groom

[@swarmsovereign5158]

alright, big question- say you're running a landscape with a few layers. you add material functions to fill in those texture layers. inside those functions, you add Texture Variation to clean up repetitions. any ideas on how to add this (from the video) into that equation? Just curious, trying to do that myself. I've got a huge landscape material I've been working on, and currently have it set up with variation, and after seeing this I have an ounce of hope that I could potentially add height as well..

[@r.k.hegeler9794]

Did something change since 5.3? As I can not get it to work. All set up this way, but:. 1. All stilllook flat cut off, and 2. : Any object is floating visually over the surface, by the height set for the ratio. The higher the ratio, the more it floats above it. Also interesting effect if you use a dirt-layer, that then floats over the surface, but not what I was looking for.

[@deyama2012]

Make sure that in the Graphics Scalability settings you have "Effects" set at least to "Medium". It doesn't work when set to "Low"

[@importon]

Very cool! could this be used with a render target to create a dynamic damage effect?

[@PerryButler]

This might work OK on flat planes but a curved terrain surface looks like liquid moving around. If you look towards the top left of your plane at the end of the video there is some texture warping. Had to use a HeightRatio of 0.005 and it worked a bit better. Any idea what the POM output pin "World Position" would be used for?

[@Utopia2023Game2]

good job

[@alexpoc]

i do get some decal like effect when i step into the texture , can i get rid of that?

[@Johngeneric]

Thank you for your always awesome videos. Is this shader heavy? Or could you easily apply this to a Master material and use it on anything that needs displacement on modular meshes? Ie tilesets and the like for 3D levels. Since we don't have native displacement anymore, I am using Bump offset, but the effect isn't nearly as strong. Thank you.

[@renderbucket]

Bump Offset is cheaper performance wise. But use POM as needed for surfaces that can really benefit from the extra illusion of depth, but try not to over use it because it can have a pretty significant performance impact (its shader instruction heavy). Of course this differs on the type of implementation of these shaders/materials, but in general id probably say that POM is about 2-8x more performance heavy than Bump Offset. This is mainly because with POM the Heightmap needs to be sampled multiple times in the Pixel/Fragment Shader unlike Bump Offset where its generally only sampling the Height once.

[@Johngeneric]

@@renderbucket As usual, Thank you so much for your valuable information. I really regard and appreciate your information. Thank you.

[@josiahgil]

does pixel depth offset work in path tracer.

[@THINKTANK7233]

Hi thankyou for the tutorial! I was wondering have you seen an instance where you get an error from the POM? it just doesn't like the heightmap Texture object i input in - I keep getting this across multiple engine versions (5.1 / 5.2) it is fine in 5.3 which is frustrating! however I'm sure this tutorial wasn't done in 5.3? I get the below everytime i plug the texture object in. SM6 Function ParallaXOcclusionMapping: (Node Camera VectorwWS) invalid node used in vertex/hull/domain shader input SM6 Function ParallaXOcclusionMapping: (Node DDX) invalid node used in vertex/hull/domain shader input SM6 Function ParallaXOcclusionMapping: (Node DDY) invalid node used in vertex/hull/domain shader input

[@Starblendet]

Is this valid to use in a landscape material?

[@100Alyjah]

where did you get the sand texture? This is the only good one I've seen!

[@renderbucket]

I photo scanned it from the Beach and baked it into textures! But this ones not that great of a tileable. I plan to make some better ones for my asset/texture library.

[@tomtomkowski7653]

Hi. Great tutorial but how to change the tiling of this material?

[@Argon-Matt]

Plug any normal Texcoord node into the UV's node on the left side of the POM node.

[@kalex07]

Does this not work anymore? my texture just blurs when moving the camera and moves the texture around the plane. Also its still a flat texture.

[@renderbucket]

Still works, will always be valid/working for the most part. Check your height intensity, check your height map, also depends what kind of geo you are applying it onto.

[@xec1]

is there a way to combine this with texture bombing?

[@MrPK]

pixel depth offset is not working in unreal 5.2, i can only see shadow of the object and mesh itself is invisible

[@renderbucket]

Just tried this out in 5.2 and it all works as expected, same in this video here. Not sure why your object would be invisible, check to make sure it didn't get pushed below the ground plane. Also make sure when you have Pixel Depth Offset on, that you set the object that has the POM applied to have Cast Shadows Off. Otherwise you will get self shadowing artifacts from the non Parallax geometry. You can also take a look at the preview of the POM material in the material editor to see if its working there. Just to make sure its not a setting in your scene or something that's hiding it.

[@MrPK]

@@renderbucket ok let me check it thanks for the comments and great tutorial 😁

[@clarebear2]

So at work we switched to UE5 from 4 for a project and it has stuffed things up. I had to re-download ALL of our megascans as they looked weird and discovered UE5 has changed their material setups to use VT textures... will VT work with POM? Also RTV, VT and POM combo?? So frustrating!

[@Rlador]

Can this be combined with triplanar?

[@JonHanna-u1v]

Can you use it with a point light or any other light with an Attenuation Radius?

[@renderbucket]

Yep, it'll mainly get its light interactions from the Normal Map.

[@GallileoPaballa]

Is this technique still useful now that we have nanite tessellated displacement in materials?

[@xalener]

It is if you wanna ship a game people can actually run hahaha

[@Criteon]

@@xalenerlol, i haven’t tried nanite displacement is it really that bad?

[@Xathian]

Great except 1 problem for me. The option to add shadows to the map doesn't work. Regardless if I plug the Albedo directly into the Base Colour node or if I run it through the Lerp/Multiply into the Base Colour the result is exactly the same.

[@touristhawk]

same

[@besogogebashvili8212]

super

[@MarcIndy333]

Is this effect basically a cheap version of displacement? Obviously one is physical geometry and while this is just an effect, but seems to be similar for lower height surfaces

[@renderbucket]

Cheaper than displacement. A bit shader instruction heavy, but been in used in games since like 2005+ for various things.

[@AberrationTheory]

Is it possible to use POM with landscape auto materials? I can't seem to find any information on this

[@m1rd]

create material function and make ur material with parralax occlusion then make a normal material and drag your material function in there..use break material attributes and plug material function node to it..then u can start

[@ssing-es9rd]

Is this any different than using displacement in modeling? I feel that this method is a bit troublesome

[@renderbucket]

This method is better in a lot of cases where you have organic ground/floor, rubble piles or other uses as well. Displacement will have more detail and its actual geometry geometry and will cast proper shadows, but the file size impact of having high density/high poly geometry is a issue in some cases. Where this method does not add geometry its just a illusion with a normal map and height map (in most cases its more efficient than displacement or highly tessellated geometry). But displacement and POM are very different approaches so you can't really compare them exactly to each other.

[@ssing-es9rd]

@@renderbucket thank you

[@ep1cn3ss2]

Could we do this on a terrain?

[@Fafmagic]

I wouldn’t do that. POM is very expensive and landscape materials tend to have several layers. You’d have to use POM on every material layer otherwise it’ll look odd. I guess if you have only a single layer it could work.

[@renderbucket]

Definitely could be used on Terrain for certain surfaces like Snow. Its been used in games in the past decade quite a bit for Terrain sections, or debris/environment set dressing piles.

[@ep1cn3ss2]

@@Fafmagic Ah ok

[@ep1cn3ss2]

@@renderbucket I see

[@IstyManame]

Show it on a landscape

[@GTexperience_Channel]

ehm, using the red channel, causes everything for me to twist strangely.

[@GTexperience_Channel]

the alpha does not change it

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

how to use this to make fake interior windows?

[@renderbucket]

This would not be a good way to make fake interiors. For that you just want to make a parallax shader that offsets a texture. I can cover this in another video. Here's a Tutorial for that, kzbin.info/www/bejne/bImnhpl5ltGGmqc

[@carlosrivadulla8903]

​@@renderbucket It would be great, I would be enormously grateful. I've been wanting to understand that method for a while now, but I can't find any good tutorial.

[@tondann]

@@renderbucket yes please! I saw this technique being used in the City Sample project and I want to learn how that is done

[@renderbucket]

@@tondann Here's a Tutorial for that, kzbin.info/www/bejne/bImnhpl5ltGGmqc

[@renderbucket]

@@carlosrivadulla8903 Here's a Tutorial for that, kzbin.info/www/bejne/bImnhpl5ltGGmqc

[@minbyoungkwun]

sm6 error

[@gameswownow7213]

very bad mic my friend. my ears bleeding

[@byEVxL]

that's a sign of autism