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Had you wonder how the floor appears "bumpy" or "wrinkly" in
video games or certain programs and "apps"? Well, there are many
techniques accomplishing that depending on the resource demand on the processor and
memory. One example is normal mapping. Normal mapping is mapping normals
in from a texture to produce different effects on the lighting and other desired
effects. Well, a light blue color indicates that the "Z" value is
straight towards you. Let's say that the light is shining directly on the surface.
Well, it will reflect back directly at you with beautiful colors and pictures.
Okay, what happens when you angle the surface away from you. The light will
not be reflected back to you as intense. Well, with a flat surface, you can
have the illusion of a gravel floor. Wow, that looks real! Play around with
the vector components, then normalize them. The sliders will move and you will
see the normalized vector along with the normal map color. In a normal map,
the value (R:128,G:128,B:128) which happens to be the HTML hex code of
#808080 indicates that the vector is (X:0,Y:0,Z:0).
Now you have the basic understanding of a normal map and that the values mean.