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(This is part II of the normal mapping journey, check the part I first for details.) So you have all now played with Qt5 NMapper tool, right? Goody, that means we have gained experience of normal mapping and created some perfectly tuned normal mapped textures. Now it's time to use these in a separate application. Let's assume that you are working on a 2D QML application, but would want 3D-looking effect into some part(s) of the UI. To visualize, here's an example NMapCarousel demo application: (Qt5 NMap Carousel, running on PC and on Raspberry Pi) Here normal mapping is used to make the carousel icons more dynamic by applying lighting. To increase the 3D impression, there are also extra shadows reflected behind the icons. To implement something similar, here's how to proceed: If not already, setup Qt5 to your PC/Mac/RPi or equivalent platform. Create normal maps of your graphic assets using Gimp, Blender, Photoshop etc. tool of your choice. Name the n

This one has been on my "blog at some point" back burner for some time now... ' Normal mapping ' is a graphics rendering technique used for faking the lighting conditions. In 3D software it is often used for bringing small bumps and dents of textures visible to achieve more realistic graphical appearance without using huge amount of polygons. Normal mapping is kinda advanced version of preceding ' Bump mapping '  technique. Where bump mapping uses just one channel for 'bumps', normal mapping uses 3-channel (RGB) bitmaps and can therefore contain more detailed normal vector information. Normal mapping technique can also be used in 2D applications to get 3D'ish looking UI elements, which means it can be used also in normal non-Qt3D QML applications. Combining image textures with specifically made normal map textures using a suitable shader is all you need. And normal maps can be automatically created with Gimp, Blender, Photoshop etc. drawing too