Bump mapping

In computer graphics, bump mapping is a technique where at each pixel, a perturbation to the surface normal of the object being rendered is looked up in a texture map and applied before the illumination calculation is done (see, for instance, phong shading.) The result is a richer more detailed surface representation that more closely resembled the details inherent in the natural world.

Original Publication:

Blinn, James F. "Simulation of Wrinkled Surfaces", Computer Graphics, Vol. 12 (3), pp. 286-292 SIGGRAPH-ACM (August 1978)

See also:

• Fake bump mapping