Bump vs. Normal Maps

[TheJamsh]

First of all, whats the difference? apart from one is black and white while the other is a bluey colour...

Second, im experimenting using normal style maps with BZ2 in place of bump maps, does BZ2 automatically apply a bumpmap (if present) so long as an additional texture with _bump is present? Is that to ANYTHING, such as water tiles, terrain tiles etc?

[Nielk1]

Bump maps describe lighting effects. Normal maps actually effect the way mesh looks to make it appear to have more polies. I wish I knew how to make normal maps, but I suck at even getting a model with a high and low poly version, though if I scrap the UV I bet I could... and then convert the difference into a normal map if I can use only the UV of the simpler when doing it.

[TheJamsh]

Normal maps are pretty easy to make (either via CrazyBump, or the normal map plugin for GIMP), i just wondered if using that in place of a bumpmap may make it work similarly, i tried it out on terrain, didn't seem to work.

[Dianoga4]

Nielk if you are using 3dmax, there is a nice plugin called Polygon Cruncher that can make high poly models low poly pretty much. It's an easy way to make LOD models. I just found it recently for use on another game and it works pretty good. There is a free 7 day trial for the latest one. I have the version down from the newest one and so far it just tells me that the trial is up and some things are disabled but it still does everything I need it to.

As for normal maps, I played around with them a bit in Blender and they are pretty cool. It's amazing how they can make a completely flat plane look 3d. I also have a plugin for Photoshop from the Nvidia site that makes normal maps pretty easy. Looks like it is called Nvidia Normal Map Filter.