Parallax: An Introduction for N00bs?

[mikegray]

Heya!

 

Now that I'm back playing Skyrim again, I've made a conscious choice for ENB - and in the process, I've started paying attention to parallax. The problem is, I don't really understand what it is, what it's good for and whether (and how) I should be trying to get some.

 

I mean, I understand that parallax stuff (a) makes things look more 3d, (b) requires ENB and © is often mentioned in the context of landscape overhauls. But I'm not at all sure about things like:

 

- What is it exactly, and how does it do what it does?

- What does it cost in terms of VRAM and FPS?

- What other pros and cons should I know about?

- Who does it good and who doesn't?

- Can I add it to a STEP installation?

 

BTW, I made an honest attempt at searching for a pre-existing guide or overview thread. Still: If I missed it, please feel free to burn my dumb azz. (And maybe throw me a link, so I can get to reading!)

 

[Aiyen]

1: it is a more advanced way of doing normal mapping... ie making depth in textures. So instead of doing depth on a model which cost performance you do it in the texture which cost next to nothing. 

2: Not much since a parallax texture is a greyscale with no alpha channel and it does not need to be high resolution to look good. 

3: pros: Done right stuff looks better then with just a normal map. Cons: if not done right it will look like crap. Another con is that it makes other nearby textures that does not have the effect look sort of out of place. 

4: Vivid landscapes and project parallax are good.. as are most other individual ones.. the main issue is as I mentioned above that the effect can stand out too much in a few cases if you do not have parallax... ie.. you get used to the extra depth and the visuals.. hence you really notice when it is not there. 

5: It is just textures so yes you can just add them on top of your STEP installation. 

 

Hope that answers all 

[mikegray]

1: it is a more advanced way of doing normal mapping... ie making depth in textures. So instead of doing depth on a model which cost performance you do it in the texture which cost next to nothing. 

2: Not much since a parallax texture is a greyscale with no alpha channel and it does not need to be high resolution to look good. 

3: pros: Done right stuff looks better then with just a normal map. Cons: if not done right it will look like crap. Another con is that it makes other nearby textures that does not have the effect look sort of out of place. 

4: Vivid landscapes and project parallax are good.. as are most other individual ones.. the main issue is as I mentioned above that the effect can stand out too much in a few cases if you do not have parallax... ie.. you get used to the extra depth and the visuals.. hence you really notice when it is not there. 

5: It is just textures so yes you can just add them on top of your STEP installation. 

 

Hope that answers all 

 

Cool - and thanks!

 

Would it be worth developing and maintaining a STEP Parallax pack that would supplement, and in some cases replace, a STEP base?

 

Also: What's the situation with Vivid landscapes? I understand that they overlap considerably with the aMidianBorn stuff, and that STEP generally sticks with aMidianBorn. So ... if I'm looking for more parallax fun, do I need to kind of choose between the two?

[plaGGy]

Don't you need an up2date ENB with FixParallax=true for this to work properly?

 

Haven't tested it without yet.

[bern43]

Anyone know if there is an issue with Parallax and ENBoost?  There's several references on the comments to the Project Parralax nexus page that seem to suggest that people are having trouble running both at the same time.

[Judassem]

Anyone know if there is an issue with Parallax and ENBoost?  There's several references on the comments to the Project Parralax nexus page that seem to suggest that people are having trouble running both at the same time.

I also would like to know that. I asked the same question and a moderator said they would work together, but I too saw some comments saying that ENBoost doesn't work with Project Parallax. 

[Aiyen]

Parallax requires the graphics part of ENB to function... hence there is going to be some performance drop from having that on (even with everything disabled since it still means more code needs to run)... you can run ENBoost without the graphics part alltogether however. This is the reason for any confusion on the topic. 

 

Granted the performance drop when everything is disabled is not that massive.. and most machines should be able to handle that without much issue. 

[TechAngel85]

What Aiyen said. Basically download the generic ENBSeries, set up the memory part of the enblocal.ini file, turn off just about everything else but parallax in both INI files and there you would have ENBoost with Parallax enabled. There is obviously a bit more to it than that, but that's basically what you'd need to do.

[keithinhanoi]

If your machine can't handle full-all-effects-on ENB, it's important to mention that some mods featuring parallax, such as the already mentioned Vivid Landscapes, include optional installs without the parallax textures, so make sure if you're not using ENB, to install those because otherwise those textures will look very very strange and sometimes "jump" around or shift (hard to explain in words, but it looks terrible in game, trust me.)

 

Also important to point out is that you don't need the newest greatest ENB binary. The parallax feature was introduced with ENB v0.116. Of course you need to go to a much later version if you want to take advantage of the ENBoost features.

Edited September 27, 2014 by keithinhanoi