Ever find yourself scratching your head when talking to people about displacement maps, photos, and caustic effects?  Well, Icrontic has a new article online that describes bump maps, displacement maps, parallax mapping, and more.

Before any journey into the unknown, one must start with a map. That is exactly where we start this journey, focusing on maps. There are many different types of maps used in computer graphics, and collectively they make up a very large portion of the visuals you see in a game. Texture maps, specular maps, shadow maps, shader-based maps, the list goes on. We’re going to focus on the shader-based, specifically bump, parallax, and displacement maps.

via Icrontic Gaming » 3D Jargon Sucks! Mapping techniques explained.