Hi,
I'm creating the following asset for my game:
http://www.starstructuresmc.com/images/conex-blue.jpg
The side of the crate has indention and would obviously take a far few vertices.
I tried using bump maps and heightmaps to achieve a similar effect and it looks reasonable. I did this by using a parallax bumped specular shader.
I was wondering, would it actually be faster / more performant to use a simple specular shader without a bump map and model the asset to feature the indents or is it quicker just to use a parallax like I have done?
This really depends on your target hardware. Parallax bump mapping is expensive on older and integrated video chipsets. Adding more polygons can be relatively cheap, depending on the object.
However, you also have to consider the fact that Unity will scale back your shaders automatically on cards that don't support them, whereas you have to handle geometry LOD yourself.
As with all questions about performance, the best answer is to test representative scenes on your target hardware.
Less Vertices are always better.
Use a High Poly modelling technique. Then use the high poly cage to create the Normal map projection.
Here is a Max example:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3ds-max/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/
