Hey Aidan, I'm no guru on this, but a normal map is a texture that defines a surface normal via color. A surface normal is the vector (a three dimensional direction) that points away from a surface. In rendering you use this vector to evaluate how much light any given area on an object reflects, and in which direction. By mapping a normal map to a surface you can artificially influence these normal vectors, and thus give an object a lot more detail in the rendering phase, that is not really there in geometry. Thus it renders fairly quickly, too. I may be wrong on this, but to me a normal map is a shortcut from a displacement map, since the later must be evaluated to generate normals, while the first already defines them by itself... hope that helped explain this technology some more.
Daniel On 6/4/07, Aidan O Driscoll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
AND - Just came across this: http://sv3.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77037
