Hello.
i need a parallax shader that would work in my case (you'll see further). I know next to nothing about creating a shader (though I read the tut). Don't want to be picky but the default one is way too off. Maybe it's some parameter I'm missing. I tried those sliders under parallax spec box but wouldn't do anything.
Anyway, if I'm not asking for too much, would anyone be so kind to direct me to a good parallax shader? By good I mean "correct". In this particular case of mine I'd also need a little more relief, the effect to be more outstanding, sticking out, you got it :D, so the wheels are wider. Here are some screenies about the default parallax effect -- judge it for yourselves:

If nobody knows of such a shader, I'd take the hard way and modify the default one (God knows what I'd have to edit, it looks spooky, lol) so at least tell me what exactly I'm supposed to change.

parallax shader needs plane surfaces, for curved shapes use bump

Thanks, painkiller but I only have flat surfaces (2D). It's the particular shader that's... not right.

what's my track different from a simple box, this is what I don't understand. Do you find the rendering above satisfying?
Here is how xNormal parallax looks like:


The wheels literally stand out from the background in the right direction, according to camera, not to mention the bump lighting on the wheels.
The diffuse texture is not the same but it doesn't matter anyway. It's a geometry issue.
Sometimes areas of wheels are cropped and gaps between the wheels can be seen but I couldn't ask for more from parallax -- it's not real geometry.

It's not the shader that's wrong (well it might be, but that's not your problem so far). Yes, you only have flat surfaces, but polygons are always flat. Look at the smooth lighting on your tracks. That's because the vertices are all welded together. Normals get interpolated between vertices to make things smooth.

You want flat-shading, and to do this you need hard edges between each flat surface. And to do that, you need to detach them from each other. And to do that in MED you want to copy a flat surface, delete it, then paste it (it will have the right position, but not be attached to the surfaces around it).

Jibb

or you can also separate faces in different groups

And does this work, even when the faces are still connected?

when you separate them in different groups the vertices are also separated, I've done that many times

Now you guys have lost me completely. Either I don't get you, or the other way around. If I'm wrong (in fact, in either case) then please bear with me a little more and enlighten me. So:

I have a simple 8 sided box with diffuse, normal and height textures. That's my track.
In xNormal it looks just fine. But unfortunately I can't get that shader.
In A8 the direction in which the white "high" areas in the height map (wheels) are projected is almost the opposite to as it should be. The angle is my main problem (1) and that the wheels don't get lit as they are in xNormal (as deserved ).
Maybe you (JibbSmart) are talking about the different sides of the model, like top, side, under etc. Then I don't see how the edges between these faces would matter. I don't know of any other edges.

Yes, those are the edges I'm talking about. And they do matter, because you want the parallax shader to treat the faces as flat surfaces, but they won't get treated that way unless they are separated from the other surfaces. See the smooth shading in your screenshots? That's because they're connected. You don't want that in this circumstance.

If they're being projected in the reverse (it's hard to tell from your screenshots), try inverting the height map. I've never used the built-in parallax shader, so I can't really give you much information about how it works.

Jibb