[Omniscaper]

Is bump mapping near the horizon yet? I'm just curious considering that bumpmapping is a feature that is a native part of Directx 8 if not ealier. I think that would be the best and final graphic capability I can think of that you geniouses have yet to squeeze out of the DX8 engine.

Normal mapping I believe is a DX9 thing, but I think its over rated anyway. I see no difference between the two. Bumpmaps are easier to manipulate and create.

[Overlord]

I think with normal mapping you can let a lowpoly-model look like a hipoly-model and with bump mapping you add heights (bumps; with realistic shadow) to the model, AFAIK.

[Edit] See: http://www.fact-index.com/n/no/normal_mapping.html

In 3D computer graphics, normal mapping is a more advanced version of bump mapping. While bump mapping uses grayscale variance, normal mapping uses the three color channels (RGB) for the three normal axis (XYZ). Like bump mapping, it is used to add details to shading without using more polygons.

[Styxx]

Hm, there are several kinds of "bump" maps, and most of them use normal maps on current games.

The "DirectX 8" one you're mentioning is probably Environment Bump Mapping, or perhaps Emboss Bump Mapping, both of which are "fake" bumps, and have to use normalization cubemaps so your detail level isn't awesome, but for most maps you won't notice. Full normal maps require real fragment programs (a.k.a. pixel shaders), and also use normal maps, but since you can normalize the results on the shader you don't have the limitation in normal directions that you get from a cubemap.

Now, there's also Parallax Mapping, which can yield some awesome results when combined with Normal Mapping, and it's very simple to implement, and this one does use the greyscale height maps we all associate with "bump" maps. This one can only be implemented through fragment programs.

I don't have much experience with Direct3D, but the shaders themselves are very simple and I've implemented all of them, and with a nice recent 3D chip you can do everything in a single pass. If the SCP guys ever upgrade the code to DirectX 9, I'll volunteer to code all the shaders for normal maps, parallax, and I'll even throw phong shading and reflective maps in for free, and just about any other shader people are willing to make the textures for.



Now, for self-shadowing bumps you'll need Horizon Mapping, which is a whole other deal. Never implemented this one, but it can't be all that hard, I guess. I just think it has heavy texture usage - you need one map for each quadrant of the viewing direction, I think.

If you guys want to go really postal, there's also Polynomial Texture Maps (high level of detail, a pain to make the maps) and Spherical Harmonics (lots of pre-processing, can create some nice global illumination effects). But I don't think anyone will be making those kinds of maps for FS2 models.

[Fry_Day]

Technically, the entire point of DirectX 8 is that there are no 'Native effects', but that everything is flexible allowing each developer to create his own effects.

What you call normal-mapping is Dot3 Bumpmapping on the hardware, and if bump-mapping will be implemented, it will be using normal-mapping, though, generally, it will most likely be able to get height-maps as input and transparently convert them to normal-maps.

The trick with normal-mapping is that it gives you more information, so you can encode fake lighting details into a normal map (which is what Doom 3 uses with its character models).

And, just to set things straight, Dot3 Bumpmapping was a part of DirectX 7 already, and, indeed, Doom3 can run on DirectX 7 hardware (Though extremely slowly).

And, most likely, once I start coding again (hopefully really soon), I'll get around to implementing bump-mapping sometime (As it was on my to-do list before the terrible calamity of a harddrive failure hit me).

Come to think of it, I haven't been developing at home for almost a year.
Will be rectified.

[Bobboau]

if you get started be sure to talk with me I want to figure a way of integrateing shaders with the dynamic vertex format we (and to a greater effect FE2) are useing.