Beginner’s Bump & Displacement Mapping (Revised)
November 26th, 2006
Bump mapping and displacement mapping are two special techniques for making an object appear to have a rough or irregular surface.
What is bump mapping?
Bump mapping takes a grayscale image and reads the light and dark information to simulate an irregular surface. When you render an object with a bump-mapped material, lighter (whiter) areas of the map appear to be raised, and darker (blacker) areas appear to be lowered. Note that bump mapping does not modify the geometry, only the normals.
The bumps are a simulation created by perturbing face normals before the object is rendered. Therefore, bumps don’t appear on the silhouette of Read More...
