how to use bump maps

lester · Post #1by **lester** » 10.06.2003, 01:13

I'm new to celestia.

How do I use bump maps? Where do I put them? (polite answers only!)

I'm particularly interested in Mars and want to get the most realistic rendering possible.

Thanks

Post #2by **selden** » 10.06.2003, 02:02

Bumpmaps as used by Celestia are just 8bit grey-scale images that are white at the highest elevations and black at the lowest. Since they can only represent 256 levels of altitude, they aren't ideal.

Normalmaps are 24bit RGB images with the different color channels representing the x,y and z components of the surface normal vectors.

Please use the "search" button above and find the articles that contain the word NormalMap. Fridger has explained how to create them much better than I can.

Or, you might just be patient and wait until he publishes the work he's been doing recently to create high resolution normal maps for Mars.

Darkmiss · Post #3by **Darkmiss** » 10.06.2003, 10:30

I have a Bump map on my Earth texture, that didn't seem to work properly, when i first got it. (back on Celestia 1.2.5)

But when i converted it to 24bit colour it worked fine
and has done since :?:

was / is this a bug of some kind
I have not had any sucsses useing any greyscale bump maps yet :?:

I havent tried to convert it back to greyscale since
but it is still working fine for me now.