In cartography, relief mapping, or shaded relief, is a technique of displaying 3D terrain shape by simulating shadows formed by a single light source shining obliquely onto a 3D surface.

In computer graphics, relief mapping is an alternative texture mapping technique to parallax mapping that is much more accurate, and can support self-shadowing and normal mapping. It can be quite simply described as a short-distance raytrace done on a pixel shader; various techniques can be implemented to speed up the raytrace by taking variable step sizes.

Relief texture mapping supports the representation of 3D surface detail, producing self-occlusion, self-shadowing, view-motion parallax, and silhouettes. This technique produces correct views of 3D surfaces and scenes by augmenting textures with per texel depth.

It is not yet common in video games, as it is a rather slow technique due to the need for a large amount of per-pixel processing. Crysis, Oblivion, and Unreal Tournament 3 have a similar feature called Parallax mapping.

See also

Cartography

• Shaded relief

Computer Graphics

• Bump mapping
• Normal mapping
• Parallax mapping

External links

• Relief mapping explanation, with code
• Manuel's Relief texture mapping
  • ''Real-Time Relief Mapping on Arbitrary Polygonal Surfaces''
  • ''Relief Mapping of Non-Height-Field Surface Details''