This plugin implements the Relief Mapping technique as a 3ds max procedural texture plugin.
It is a sort of per-pixel displacement mapping effect supporting self-shadows. It is simple to use and only requires two texture maps: a color texture and a normal texture with depth information in alpha channel.
http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/files/3DSMax_ReliefMapping.zip
Included in zip is a sample max scene ready to render and a readme file with more information about the plugin options.
The following images show a compare for the sample scene using Normal Mapping and Relief Mapping (the ground for example is a single quad polygon with only 2 triangles and still gets displaced properly… also notice the self-shadows from the displaced pixels on the wooden box made of only 12 triangles).
Normal Mapping: http://img386.imageshack.us/my.php?image=renderscenenormal5vo.jpg
Relief Mapping: http://img386.imageshack.us/my.php?image=renderscenerelief1iw.jpg
More information about how Relief Mapping works and other related demos can be found at:
http://fabio.policarpo.nom.br/relief/
