- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Bump-mapping, pretty much like Shishka Said, makes the appearance of bumps and curves, to a flat surface. What happens is a 2-D image is applied to the 3D geometry or characacter. The image essentially tells the lighting engine to reflect the light off of the surface in a certain way. Since it can make flat surfaces look like they have depth without the extra polygons, the game has less to process, thus making a higher frame rate, and smoother processing.
[Edited on 8/3/2004 8:22:33 PM]