Ive been recently experimenting with bump mapping with source textures for maps.

Ive had great and not so great success with some textures coming from a flat 2d look to an impressive 3d look, most notably with cobbles being the most successful as they have places where indentations occur.

What I was wondering is can or is it done to models and has anyone tried doing this yet? Results?

yea i have tried a few times with some of my models and it works great ..
i successfull ported the dod colt as desert eagle for cs:s with bumpmapping ..

Could I possibly see some before and after shots? Id be glad to show you some as well.

Also, were you using a greyscale heightmap or where you using some heavy duty bump mapping plugins with photoshop? I have the latter and I must say they rock. They even make those cool looking RGB maps that the XSI/Valve ppl showed in those old tutorial videos.

i use the ps filter nvidia made
you can't really see the bump effect on the
model unless you are standing in a very bright
light. i guess it's because the skin isn't highres
enough. but i can show you the model in bright light
and in normal light

ps. i can send you the model if you want

Bump mapping, normal mapping, etc. are just part of the Source material system. They apply to pretty much anything in Source that can have a texture applied so thats models and map surfaces.

OMG!

Can someone make the models for CS:S? Playmodels and Weaponsmodels? That would be awesome - and nice to wait for DoD: S :)

IMO you shouldn't just stick a bump/normalmap to an existing model + texture because they were both made without bumpping in mind. The texture will have its own lightning which will conflict with the one generated dynamically.

You can tweak the diffuse map and create a new specular and normal based on that.

When you base your normal map off a greyscale heightmap, make sure it is as clear and simple as possible. The more fuzzy spots you have the messier your end result will be.

I'd also suggest using KALDERA, a plugin for 3D-Max to convert the greyscale map into a normal map. It gives better results than the NVIDIA plugin for Photoshop.

Cheers.