Normal Map Vs Bump Map

Heightbump map vs normal map vs. In other words while the geow character looks good if you look at a 90 degree angle the bump isnt seen.

How To Bake Bump Maps As Normal Maps With Blender Gamebanana

Displacement maps so i am struggling to understand a concept and this is the only place that i can see it addressed.

Normal map vs bump map. A bump map stores the simulated height of each pixel in the map. The most obvious difference is that height maps are greyscale only because they only portray height differences. Parallax occlusion is like a normal map but it differs in that it is calculated based off of the camera angle and not just the light.

In the end a normal map does create the illusion of depth detail on the surface of a model but it does it differently than a bump map. The renderer has to then convert these heights into slopes when it renders. A normal map uses rgb information that corresponds directly with the x y and z axis in 3d space.

Iirc bump maps just store height data while normal maps store slightly more. As we already know a bump map uses grayscale values to provide either up or down information. My primary purpose is character and prop modelling for games.

A normal map stores the slopetilt of each pixel in the texture. It does this by comparing the current pixel with all its neighbors to find its slope. Parallax mapping takes normalbump maps a step further and displaces the pixel heights of a surface which causes the texture to look 3d when viewed at a steep angle and tesselation takes the normalbump data and either modifies the existing geometry to have the fine detail embedded in the map or generates fine.

Height maps while both normal and height maps give our low poly models the appearance of more detail they are used for distinctly different purposes.

Unity Manual Normal Map Bump Mapping