bumpmapping and squirrels

hi folks!

just a few random questions that came to my head while trying to achieve some stuff:

is it at all possible to bumpmap a 3Dbox object? i tried using the normal way (that's used in one of the examples lying around here), but i got some strange results. tried some other stuff too but couldnt get it to work.

also, i was testing to see if i could make a nice tail effect. think squirrel's tail and how it sort of mimics the movement of the squirrel.

im just not sure how i could make it so that the tail(made of several furry sprites)) follows and mimics the actual squirrel objects movement with increasing delay to the tip of the tail. am i completely wrong if i assume the use of lastX and lastY would bring some promising results? im just not sure how to make the actual movement of the tail. if anyone has some great ideas id be more than happy to hear them.

thanks for your time <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Bumpmapping:

Not directly and probably not very precisely - you can bumpmap a 2D projection of your box by having it on a separate layer with a normal map texture applied and having that bump-mapping Effect on - the name escapes me at the moment. Then you'd probably have to use events to set up a "light" for the light direction.

Squirrel!:

Use Physics with springs to create a chain of objects, but for display, use Ribbon and bind each Ribbon vertex to each of the Physics chain object's pivot.

hi!

thanks for replying.

yeah i think i tried something like that for the bumpmaps. unfortunately i didnt quite get it to work properly, i guess im better off just using it on basic textured, normal mapped sprites, that works well enough for now lol.

im not sure about that physics thing, since im trying to deliberately avoid using physics behavior. id like to try ribbon though, problem is i havent really studied how it works yet, so its pretty much uncharted territory for me personally. i do have the ribbon tutorial, but it doesnt really explain what happens and why, so its a steep learning curve.