I did a search and could not find this anywhere so forgive me if this has been posted before and I did not catch it.

This is a nice tool. ShaderMap Pro

There is a free version but the commercial version is only $20. It is easy to use and there is a vid that shows how it works.

hey, that seems to be a nifty tool. do you have experience with it? how stable is it, how many output formats does it support, any image size limitations one should be aware of etc.

The thing I liked about this tool is it had Displacement and Normal and Specular and usually you have to have several programmes to get all those and sometimes the tools are hard to use.

Just to let you know it can handle large sizes although you would never use this in a game. 2844x2274 size jpg texture and it output the displacement map in the same size in bmp and the normal map to the same size tga and the specular to bmp same size as the original texture. In less than a minute I had all those textures output but I have a triple core computer so that might have a little to do with it. The programme is pretty fast thought and I was using it on an old laptop too.

It inputs bmp and jpg and png and tga.

I have yet to find out how to control the output format as one time it output to all tga and sometimes mixed formats like bmp and tga.

I have not had the programme crash on me yet. The interface is easy to navigate. I am happy with it and think it is worth the $20.

purchased

Seems good. What is a DUDV map?

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Du/dv_maps

nothing to remember...

this is a clone of the wonderful crazybump... or vice versa Check out CrazyBump, it's a great tool!!!

but crazybump costs much more and as a terrible interface toolkit.

I personally like the casual/funny interface... it looks retarded... exactly reflecting the ease of use of the program, i bought it and never stopped using it

the interface of Crazy Bump is OK but it costs 300 $ now, except you want to use it only for non-commercial purposes.
300 $ just for creating normal-maps? This is a joke. You can save a bit more and buy ZBrush instead. This is no sensible relation.