CompuServe Messages

What I meant was that you can "model" a bump map fairly easily. Say yuo wanted a bitmap that produced a bump of a series of balls around a clock face. Without too much thought, you could quickly make a cylinder and array a series of GSspheres around it, letting them intersect the cylinder as much as you want them to "bump" out in the map. Now go into video post (there's no need for lighting!) and render the perpendicular viewport. You now have grey scale map that corresponds to the distance the objects were from you – an bump map of balls pushing through a round face. Now I bet you were searching for a way to do true displacement mapping – actuallly changing the profile of a mesh. Well, in the hands of a good IPAS prograrmer that could be possible now that R4 gives them access to the Z-Buffer. For example, Digimation's new LenzEFX package effects glows around objects based upon the Z-Buffer – allowing you to exapand the glow as far as you wish from the surface of the mesh. – Phil