LogIn3D Artist OfNodesAndNoodles continues to experiment with parallax occlusion mapping, applying their new technique POMegranate to the Geralt model.
This very detailed Geralt of Rivia chain mail was done by a 3D Artist known as OfNodesAndNoodles, who experimented with adding parallax occlusion mapping to materials in Blender with POMegranate, their own take on this technique.
As the artist explained, in terms of performance, the difference in render times between parallax and geometry will be noticeable, but still less than the cost of animating the geometry. OfNodesAndNoodles also applied bFUr to Geralt's beard, a procedural one-click fur and hair add-on for Blender:
A while ago we introduced POMegranate, still a WIP back then, which is now available on OfNodesAndNoodles's Gumroad with a video guide and detailed description. You can learn more about it and purchase the add-on by clicking this link.
POMegranate brings quick and easy parallax occlusion mapping to your Blender materials using "layers" to achieve the displacement effect and can produce a "sink" or "raise" effect where the displacement will appear to take place either below or above the level of the actual geometry:
POM or parallax occlusion mapping is a shader technique that creates the illusion of depth and makes simple geometry with very few vertices look high-poly and displaced. In the past, OfNodesAndNoodles has released Super Bump, another lightweight add-on for adding shadow-casting parallax occlusion to your Blender materials, and analyzed both these approaches in a comparison against each other and native subdivision with displacement:
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