Soo Ive been looking into all of this impressive skinning, and have always wanted to get into it. Never really been great though. I was looking through the skinning terms, trying to expand my skinning knowledge, and bumpmaps kept showing up. Ive always noticed these, but never really done anything with them.
So my question is what is a bumpmap, and what does it do?
Bumpmaps
On the contrary, the bumpmap is just an addition to a texture, that does indeed give it bumps and indentations.McT0asT wrote:A bumpmap is basically a bitmap that gives things a texture, like bumps and indentations.
No bumpmap:
With bumpmap:
As seen in the picture of the sphere with bumpmapping, there is the illusion of indentations. The indentations aren't actually in the sphere's polygon geometry, though, they're simply just an alpha-scale "texture" put on the object to affect the way light hits certain areas. Not to be confused with displacement mapping, which actually changes around the geometry (I think.)
It's easy to see if you play around with the flashlight in Halo. Halo 1, for instance, in the cave that is "not of natural formation," You'll notice that some areas lighted by the warthog become more lighted than others, while others become darker. Same with the sandy ground in "Truth and Reconciliation." This creates the illusion that the darker areas are not facing the light source as well as the lighted areas, and in turn, makes it seem more "bumpy."
If that makes sense.
Don't feel too stupid, not even two weeks ago I didn't know what anti-aliasing was.
EDIT: Here, have a picture of Halo 1's bumpmapping.
