Which of these is more standard / what are the applications of each? It seems that displacement mapping is higher quality but is it significantly harder performance-wise?
akshay
Professor Fedkiw provides some information about displacement mapping at https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs148/pdf/class_10_more_texture_mapping.pdf on page 11. Displacement mapping does generally produce a higher-quality result (i.e., a more realistic result), but it is significantly more expensive since you actually have to alter the geometry of the object. Normal mapping is an easy approximation of displacement mapping, but produces a less realistic result. Displacement mapping is more useful for large changes in the surface geometry which would look fake with normal mapping, while normal mapping is more useful for details that would be too expensive to displacement map.
Which of these is more standard / what are the applications of each? It seems that displacement mapping is higher quality but is it significantly harder performance-wise?
Professor Fedkiw provides some information about displacement mapping at https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs148/pdf/class_10_more_texture_mapping.pdf on page 11. Displacement mapping does generally produce a higher-quality result (i.e., a more realistic result), but it is significantly more expensive since you actually have to alter the geometry of the object. Normal mapping is an easy approximation of displacement mapping, but produces a less realistic result. Displacement mapping is more useful for large changes in the surface geometry which would look fake with normal mapping, while normal mapping is more useful for details that would be too expensive to displacement map.