Normal and Other Maps

I found a great page on normal and other maps:

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap/

This page covers what are normal maps, how to make them, and how they work with other maps like ambient occlusion, etc. It also gives you a few ways on how to make them. You can use all sorts of programs like a free program from Nvidia that works with Photoshop. You can use CrazyBump which is awesome, but it costs money, and I also use Blender.

CrazyBump comes with a free trial and it takes a 2D image and creates normal maps, specular maps, ambient occulsion, and displacement maps. These are crucial in making great looking textures.

With the Nvidia plugin it will only create a normal map, but with a bit of Photoshop skills you can make the other maps. Using Photoshop to fine tune texture maps is highly recommended.

I really like using Blender because I can pretty much make most of the maps I need. It can be a bit cumbersome at first, but for a free program, it's great.