A few models I've seen lately have a normal map attached to them, rather 
than the standard bump map. POV-Ray uses bumpmaps.

Essentially, a normal map has the x,y,z coordinates in the r,g,b values, 
rather than grayscale. How hard would it be to implement a normal map 
such as this, rather than a bump map?

To further put salt on the wound, the one program out there that seems 
to be able to translate normal maps into bump maps costs $100 for a 
non-educational license, pretty high for a piece of software that has 
such a narrow purpose...

I need to sit down and write a small app that will do it. Maybe support 
for normal maps can go into POV 4's suggestion box? Unless it's trivial 
to add to 3.7, I'm guessing not, due to the way normals work (though, 
some normal patterns do have special normal perturbing functions...)

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