The former sounds like you want displacement mapping - that'll be doable in hardware in the not too distant future (I think it may already be in the Matrox HW). I personally don't think it needs to be done at pixel level - I'm sure it'd look ok if done on vertices assuming they are, say, 10 to 100 pixels in size. A final bump map pass would finish the effect.Matt Burris said:
As for better bump mapping, have a search for polynomial texture mapping.. it looks quite effective.
