Micro Texturing


PowerVR Series1

Up
Shell
Micro Texturing
Dynamic Lighting
Additive Blending
Chroma Key
PowerVR Detection
Ascii Text in 3D
Table Fog
AppHints

Micro Texturing

Micro-Texturing is a technique used to show more surface detail when looking closely at wood, marble, ground, etc.

Micro-Texturing is very easily realised on PowerVR by defining a translucent 'shell' around the object which should be micro-textured. The texture of the translucent shell should be the more detailed texture, whilst the more coarse texture is wrapped across the object itself. The trick is to automatically change the opacity of the translucent shell as the camera is brought closer, from completely transparent (when the camera is far away) to more opaque (when the camera is brought closely to the object).

The easiest way to do this is to make use of the fact that, as the camera is moved closer to a surface texture, the mipmap level of that texture changes. By supplying the mipmap levels for the translucent shell texture, and altering the translucency for the different mipmap levels, the effect of a surface changing opacity as the camera is brought closer can be realised.

PowerSGL Direct Example

This PowerSGL Direct example illustrates Micro-Texturing of gravel.
The camera is brought closer to the ground and gradually the pebbles appear,
which is illustrated by the screenshots on the left.

Additionally to supplying mipmap levels which each have different translucency
the global translucency is altered with altitude in this example.

Download this Micro-Texturing PowerSGL Direct Example [156 KB]

PowerSGL Example

The example shown here illustrates the application of Micro-Texturing
when looking at the surface of an ocean. As the camera is moved
closer to the surface (top image down to bottom image on the left),
more detail such as water ripples is revealed.

Download this Micro-Texturing PowerSGL Example [454 KB]