$ssbump

$ssbump is a boolean material parameter that flags a $bumpmap as being self-shadowing. It is only supported with LightmappedGeneric and requires the Orange Box.

You can read more about the technology behind it in this paper.

Tip:Self-shadowed normal mapping is actually faster than the standard method!

Example

rockwall_cave_02a_height-ssbump.vtf

LightmappedGeneric
{
	$basetexture	"nature/rockwall_cave02a"
	$surfaceprop	concrete
	$bumpmap	"nature/rockwall_cave_02a_height-ssbump"
	$ssbump		1
}

Creating self-shadowing bump maps

It's currently only possible to create ssbumps manually, since height2ssbump has yet to be released. Nevertheless, here are the command line parameters it will support:

<path/filename>

The source heightmap (TGA format).

-r <int>

Set the number of 'rays' (default 250). More rays take more time.

-f <int>

Set smoothing filter radius (default 10; 0 disables).

-n

Generate a conventional normal map.

-A

Generate ambient occlusion in the alpha channel.

-D

Write out filtered result as filtered.tga.