PARALLAX

Parallax mapping adds depth to flat surfaces to simulate greater detail.

Skyrim supports parallax; however, the vanilla shaders are broken. The SSE Parallax Shader Fix fixes it, but objects are still noticeably flat.

This effect adds a highly optimised version of parallax mapping, called Contact Refinement Parallax Mapping. This means that performance and quality is significantly improved compared to traditional parallax occlusion and steep parallax mapping techniques.


Preview: The new technique compared to the original Parallax Occlusion Mapping patch (modern GPU). This is a 0.22 milliseconds performance hit, and a 6% fps hit in this instance compared to vanilla.

A High Quality option is provided which doubles the sample count and approximates the intersection point using Parallax Occlusion Mapping. This significantly improves the quality and removes aliasing. TAA or the Skyrim Upscaler is recommended when using this option due to CRPM artifacts.

Terrain Parallax requires all landscape textures are made to support parallax. Vanilla Complex Parallax - Landscapes is a great option!

Community Shaders includes significant performance improvements for terrain rendering to offset the performance cost.

Parallax mapping is bandwidth-bound.To improve performance you can recompress parallax textures to BC4.


PARALLAX SHADOWS

All parallax materials include support for approximate soft shadows. This is an extremely cheap effect which applies to all directional and point lights.




COMPLEX MATERIAL

Complex Material / parallax ENB guide: | Modding.wiki

Includes support for the Complex Material specification which makes use of the environment mask. This includes parallax, as well as more realistic metals and specular reflections.

Complex Material support is based on the nexus guide which includes a specification for the technique. It may not be identical to ones used in other shader mods. 

This includes support for Majestic Landscapes, Majestic Mountains Complex Material, and Parallax Spell Impacts.

May lead to some warped textures on modded content which have an invalid alpha channel in their environment mask, e.g. the Durzog in Immersive Creatures.

Does not support skin shaders as no mod uses this feature.

Community Shaders includes a bug fix to support this effect.


REQUIREMENTS

Community Shaders
SSE Engine Fixes or Engine Fixes VR
Auto Parallax


CREDITS

aers for the original parallax fix and SSE Engine Fixes.
shadowking97 for the original shader this mod was based on.
jeromeJrm for their Complex Material guide.
Ent for answering my questions about terrain parallax.
Pfuscher for answering my questions about Complex Material.
MJP for extremely useful optimisation tips and links.
thyrn for optimisation help.
The Community Shaders discord for extensively testing and offering feedback during development.
VishVadeva for benchmarking.


REFERENCES

https://github.com/tgjones/slimshader-cpp/blob/master/src/Shaders/Sdk/Direct3D11/DetailTessellation11/POM.hlsl
https://github.com/alandtse/SSEShaderTools/blob/main/shaders_vr/ParallaxEffect.h
ParallaxOcclusionMapping.fx from the DirectX SDK
Review of Displacement Mapping Techniques and Optimization
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag - Road to next-gen graphics
A new approach for Parallax Mapping: presenting the Contact Refinement Parallax Mapping Technique
Practical Parallax Occlusion Mapping For Highly Detailed Surface Rendering
Quadtree Displacement Mapping with Height Blending