Native support for bump-mapping? (Normal mapping)

I just wanted to know if Blitz3D natively supports bump-mapping or not? I'm not talking about a second texture to add light and dark details via alpha-blending; I already know it can do that. I'm talking about normal mapping: using a greyscale heightmap texture that gets interpreted as high and low areas along a textured polygon.

I'd immagine one could implement their own solution by drawing meshes in realtime, but I'd rather do it natively if that's an option. I don't think I've seen any tutorials regarding bump/normal mapping.

It's easy enought to convert a heightmap into a normal map then apply the normal map.

Okay. Thanks for the input there, Rob. :)

Um, how?

Is there a BB command for normal maps? Do you mean there's a specific program to turn a heightmap into a normal map? Or do you just mean we have to do it in BB code, but it's "easy?"

You could do BB code to turn a height map into a normal map, or download the photoshop plug in from 'somewhere'

Check out Rob's normal map demos.
http://www.blitzbasic.com/Account/showuser.php?id=8

Okay. After spending some quality time with my assistant Creative Director, Mr. Google, I've worked out how to create normal maps from heightmaps. Thanks for the tutorial, too! :D

I'm still a long way from a proper workflow, but it's a start!