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Ravenfield Tessellation Demonstration

DISCLAIMER: This mod requires DirectX 11! Macs will not be able to run it!


Tessellation is the next step in Ravenfield's terrain graphics

Originally you could only put a Albedo and a normal map. Only putting a Albedo map would end up being very flat, no matter how much detailed the Albedo map was. This is because it is just a picture which is in itself flat. Then comes along normal maps. Normal maps were added alongside an Albedo to create the illusion of depth and detail. It would change light intensities on the texture in accordance to where the light is coming from and where there should be an elevation or depression in the object. This though is still flat as it is still just a picture and if you were to view it from its side instead of above, the flatness would become VERY apparent.

Here is where Tessellation comes in. In Tessellation you add a displacement map alongside the other texture maps you provided. It will subdivide polygons in the mesh (in our case the terrain object) and move the vertices up and down as the displacement map tells them too. It is then optimized by only having this be done to nearby parts of the mesh and parts of it farther away are not Tessellated. This finally gives us a true 3D realism in the Terrain's texture and this method is used by nearly all AAA studio.

In here I have three zones: Desert, Trench, and Forest, each to demonstrate it with Tessellation. I have presented it in the style of Triple Wars by AppleSeed Smoothie. Credit to them for the idea. This map also features Postprocessing


Assets used come from Quixel Megascans, NatureManufacturer and the Tales Factory Bunker and Trench pack