yeah, still isn't as prodominant as it should be unfortunately Exeat... may have to see about linking the DirectX DX6 Bumpmapping technique, slower but is alot better.
As for the point in the monochrome image, both the mono and normal maps will produce the exact same effect - the mono is a very simple thing to create, all you do is greyscale your image and then accentuate the curves so that there is more contrast between the light and dark
for a normal map there are several ways,
- ATi have a program call the Compressionator, this allows you to create Compressed textures S3TC compliant.
- ATi also have something called the NMF exporter for 3D Studio Max 4/5/6 which will export a normal map to a lower polygon model based on a high poly version. Infact this is something i use regularly as it is extremely useful, i have importers for NMF (Normal Mesh Format) and NMB (nVidia Mesh Binary) as soon as Lee sends me some documentation on something. Will give you far better support for normal/non-environment bump mapping.
- nVidia's Normal Exporter for Photoshop 6/7 - very good exporter too for creating all the different kinds of normal map, however confusing to use unless you understand a little about them first.
That said it has a 3Dviewer so you can test out your normal maps prior to export - works very well with the DDS exporter.
- Deep Exploration 3.0, they've contained a 2d normal mapper since 2.0 ... no options but creates normal maps easily and the demo give you exporting abilities for upto 30days.
there are a few more programs online which allow it 3rd party, i'll see about digging up the normalisation format later and posting the C++ of it for people to create thier own compilers
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as for testing, i thought DBP had a Bump Mapping Available() function ... however if the current version is Pixel Shaded / Vertex Shaded i can very easily mock up a Shader after this weekend for it.
