Displacement shader

I dug up more information on how we can create our foreground with the rendered snow. I can use  displacement shader and use this to create my foreground and create the snow around the ground.

RSL What is a Displacement Shader?

Displacement Shader Algorithm Displacement shaders alter the smoothness of a surface, however, unlike bump mapping which mimics the appearance of bumpiness by reorientating surface normals, displacement shading genuinly effects the geometry of a surface. In the case of Pixars prman renderer, each object in a 3D scene is sub-divided into a fine mesh of micro-polygons after which, if a displacement shader has been assigned to an object, they are "pushed" or "pulled" in a direction that is parallel to the original surface normal of the micro-polygon. After displacing the micro-polygon the orientation of the local surface normal(N) is recalculated. Figure 1 The following algorithm lists the four basic steps that a displacement shader generally follows in order to set the position (P) and normal (N) of the micro-polygon being shaded. 1 Make a copy of the surface normal (N) ensuring it is one unit in length. 2 Calculate an appropriate value for the displacement - what will be referred to in these notes as the hump factor! 3 Calculate a new position of the surface point "P" by moving it "along" the copy of the surface normal by an amount equal to hump scaled by the value of the instance variable Km. 4 Recalculate the surface normal (N). To make a meaningful decision about the distance, if any, a micro-polygon should be displaced, a shader will make reference to the micro-polygon's, 2D surface position s, t, u, v, 3D xyz position P, orientation N, camera distance L. plus other less obvious attributes of a micro-polygon. Such information is either directly or indirectly available in data the renderer makes available to a shader through the use of global variables.

Displacement Shading & Global Variables The following table lists the global variables accessible to a displacement shader. [List of global variables available to surface shaders].  Global variable P Ns, t Ng u,v du, dv dPdu,dPdv I E Meaning surface position surface geometric normal surface texture coordinates surface geometric normal surface parameters change in u, v across the surface change in position with u and v camera viewing direction position of the camera

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