On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:11:21 -0500, Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com>
wrote:

>Stephen wrote:
>
>> Congratulations Mike, but excuse my ignorance. What is the difference between
>> normal maps and bump maps?
>
>A normal map stores the (relative) surface normal vectors in the RGB 
>channels of the image, whereas a bump map (which POV-Ray uses) stores 
>the perceived height of the surface as a gray value.
>
>Normal maps are actually more flexible in how they can alter the surface 
>normal of an image than bump maps. But, obviously these don't work in 
>POV-Ray yet.

Thanks Mike,
	I could have Googled it but I was doing an "Invisible" :P
What applications are they used in?
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message