Use 50% grey as zero height?

Question

Hi there!

I'm looking to export height maps that use 50% grey as my baseline zero height because i'm displacing negatively and positively. However, when viewing my height channel in Painter, 0 height is always black and setting height to a negative scale doesn't seem to write any data into the height map.

Could someone offer some insight on how I might set this up? For further context, I'll be rendering in Blender where the displacement has a setting to define the midlevel which I will have set at 0.5

davescm · Accepted Answer

Don't be misled by the standard black height display for negative values. Those negative values are there - they are just not displayed as standard. You can go to Display Settings > Channel Display and check 'Use +/- color for HDR values' which will show +ve values in green and negative in red (0 will remain black).

Whether you do the above or not, when exported the height map will become a greyscale and for example if exported as 16 bit PNG will be centered on 0.5 which you can plug directly into Blender's displacement node with the 0.5 setting

More here: https://substance3d.adobe.com/documentation/spdoc/height-map-painting-29130786.html

Dave

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded