Inspired by Angelo Pesce’s comment here, I decided this morning I’d have a go at generating a Normal Map from a live video input, using a CIFilter patch. The code is surprisingly simple.

///////////////////////////
////	FUNCTIONS      ////
///////////////////////////

/*
Function to calculate the luminosity of a pixel
*/

float luminosity(vec4 color)
{
	vec4 lumcoeff = vec4(0.299,0.587,0.114,0.0);
	return dot(color, lumcoeff);
}

/*
Creates Normal Map for use in Displacement Map / Height Map GLSL shaders
*/

vec4 tb_normalMap(sampler inPix)
{
	// Sampler dimensions
	vec2 dims = samplerSize(inPix);
	// Working pixel coordinates
	vec2 xy = samplerCoord(inPix);
	// Normalised coordinates of working pixel (used to calculate Normal Z component)
	vec2 xyNorm = xy / dims;
	// Normal grid size (in pixels)
	float offset = 1.0;

	// Working pixel luminosity
	vec4 pix = sample(inPix, samplerTransform(inPix, xy));
	float lumCurrent = luminosity(pix);

	// Derivitive X
	float lumdx = luminosity(sample(inPix, samplerTransform(inPix, vec2(xy.x+offset, xy.y))));
	float dx = lumCurrent - lumdx;
	// Derivitive Y
	float lumdy = luminosity(sample(inPix, samplerTransform(inPix, vec2(xy.x, xy.y+offset))));
	float dy = lumCurrent - lumdy;
	// Normal Z. I'm not sure if this is strictly-speaking correct, but it seems to work!
	float dz = 1.0;

	// Output Normal Map
	return vec4(dx,dy,dz,1.0);
}

///////////////////////////
////    MAIN LOOP      ////
///////////////////////////

kernel vec4 normalMap(sampler Image)
{
	// Output Normal Map
	return tb_normalMap(Image);
}

The idea is that this map can be used to aid lighting of meshes created with Vertex Displacement Mapping / Heightmap techniques.

May or may not be useful…

Here’s what the effect looks like (I actually think it’s quite a nice effect in it’s own right).

EDIT:
Corrected mistake in function name in main loop.