Quote: "Hey Jon; do you know of any good tutorials (non-program specific) for learning the basics of normal mapping and spec mapping?"
I've never been able to find a good enough example/tutorial for specular mapping (mostly specular colour is hard to come by) so I'll have to look out for something on that.
as for normal mapping, im not really sure of any tutorials that aren't really program specific, but maybe this will help slightly:
http://www.bencloward.com/tutorials_normal_maps9.shtml
(goes a bit into detail and the text is small
)
I'll look for some more and post some links if i do, but i haven't come across many in the past
perhaps i'll write something some time about them.
congratulations on your new job, best of luck with it