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

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