What is the difference between bump mapping and normal mapping?
They're the same, pretty much. Bump mapping is simulating bumps on a flat surface, and nowadays that's mostly done by having a normal map and doing per pixel lighting.
My understanding is that normal mapping is a certain way of implementing bump mapping. I've always thought of "bump mapping" as referring to any technique for rendering surface detail without storing, transforming, and rendering extra geometry.
In a nutshell, bump maps store a relative heightmap. That heightmap is used to generate a slope value for each texel. The slope is then used to modify the existing surface normal of the polygon in order to achieve bumpiness.
A normal map, on the other hand, encodes the surface normal in a texture map, and looks up the surface normal directly from this map for each texel, rather than perturbing an existing surface normal. Normal mapping is more generalized than bump mapping, and provides much better control over the specific surface behaviors that can be simulated, including a wider variety of potential effects.
A normal map, on the other hand, encodes the surface normal in a texture map, and looks up the surface normal directly from this map for each texel, rather than perturbing an existing surface normal. Normal mapping is more generalized than bump mapping, and provides much better control over the specific surface behaviors that can be simulated, including a wider variety of potential effects.
Use parallax mapping with a height map, and normal map, it looks 10x more realistic if implemented correctly in my opinion.
The difference between bump mapping and normal mapping is the same as the difference between a sports car and a porsche.
Quote:Original post by Ex777
Use parallax mapping with a height map, and normal map, it looks 10x more realistic if implemented correctly in my opinion.
With a sufficiently sophisticated implementation of parallax mapping, a normal map isn't actually necessary to achieve per-pixel lighting. It's possible to calculate accurate soft-shadows right in the parallax shader.
Quote:Original post by Promit
The difference between bump mapping and normal mapping is the same as the difference between a sports car and a porsche.
Exactly -
Normal mapping IS A bump mapping technique -
NormalMapping : public BumpMappingTechnique
Bump mapping is just the general idea of making a flat surface look like it has bumps. Normal mapping does this through per-pixel lighting. Parralax mapping does this through per-pixel offsets. Combine them both and you have nice "next-gen" bump mapping ;)
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