they are the same pretty much. its more like normal mapping is a form of bump mapping ,where it takes an rgb texture, where the rgb are the xyz of a normal, so that lighting can be calculated differently per pixel instead of per vertex or whatever. oldl fashioned bump mapping used grayscale images, where dark is usually deeper, and light is usually higher. the only difference as far as i know is the form of input (rgb for normal mapping and grayscale for old fashion bump mapping). I think before they used to actually perturb the pixel from the flat geometry using grayscale, so nomal mapping is actually faster.

there are a lot of websites that teach about normal mapping i think, but heres one ;) (for dx11)

http://www.braynzars...?p=D3D11NORMMAP