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by Falcon on August 12th, 2003
Bump-mapping is a programming trick that makes games very detailed. Try to think of it sort of like a three dimensional texture. It creates highly detailed surfaces on the characters and environments in games without using more polygons. For example, programmers can add the treads to a tire without adding thousands of needless polygons.
by Rook3300 on November 7th, 2003
I wouldn't say that it allows more detail without adding more needless polygons. All polygons in 3d games are needed and the more the better! Bump mapping is a shortcut to better visual effects without the performance degradation of adding additional polygons and surfaces. Essentially, the developer specifies a surface and a greyscale texture map that defines how much higher/lower that portion of the surface should appear relative to its original specification. This creates the illusion that a surface is composed of a number of surfaces instead of just being flat.
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