Normal Pass?

[masecase]

Could someone tell me what exactly a normal pass is? And how would I go about incorporating a normal pass when rendering out of Maya?

Much appreciated

 

[Matt Grunau]

I was going to go into a long explination, but why bother?

http://planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/normal.html

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-236/normal-maps/

http://www.drone.org/tutorials/normal_maps.html

http://www.simplymaya.com/movie_pages/tutorial.mhtml?tut_id=102