In the background at work I had gvtechtv in the background.
They were interviewing someone that worked on the Riddick game, and he was talking about how they are the first game to use normal maps. He then said that everything has normal maps on it, and showed it off (and it looked pretty good).
(Note all quotes are paraphrased, because I might not remember the exact quotes)
But this is where it got really bad. The interviewer said "Normal maps? Are they like bump maps?" And the the guy from Riddick said "Normal maps take bump maps to the next level, where old bump maps used lots of polygons and made your CPU chuck, normal maps streamlines it"
That is bullshit, normal maps are bump maps are the same thing. It really annolys me when people go on telelvision and talk out of their backside.
Posted by Gareth at June 1, 2004 12:00 AM | TrackBackIs that similar to the tech talked about (briefly) in the unreal3 video? They say basically how they can mix up low and high polygon maps and models or something. A bit above my head, but sounds familiar...
Posted by: Arcterex at June 1, 2004 12:23 AMWell, that's more of a side issue.
A normal map/bump map is a map of bumps, surface imperfections if you will. One way to generate a bump map/normal map is to create a very high level detail model, then generate bump maps from that model, and then use that on a low detail model.