Hi community. I finished a new mini project about Displacement
Mapping using DirectX 11. A normal map is a texture, but instead
of storing RGB data at each texel, we store a compressed
x-coordinate, y-coordinate and z-coordinate in the red
component, green component, and blue component, respectively.
These coordinates define a normal vector, thus a normal map
stores a normal vector at each pixel. The strategy of normal
mapping is to texture our polygons with normal maps. We then
have per-pixel normals which capture the fine details of a
surface like bumps, scratches and crevices. We then use these
per-pixel normals from the normal map in our lighting
calculations, instead of the interpolated vertex normal. Normal
mapping just improves the lighting detail, but it does not
improve the detail of the actual geometry. So in a sense, normal
mapping is just a lighting trick. The idea of displacement
mapping is to utilize an additional map, called a heightmap,
which describes the bumps and crevices of the surface. In