[polynurb]

ok, here is what i have been doing:

paint displacement maps by hand in PS, with gradients an stuff;
basically learing to get grey values right for absolute heights;
then I started to play with offset value for bidirectional displacement.

now for offset 0 , black means 0 heigth, sure
but what is the exact grey value for 0 at offset 0,5?
I tried 50% grey in RGB mode, and I still got some minimal displacement on the edges of a cube.
Then I tried conversion to greyscale, same map, shows 59% K for what was RGB grey at 128; ok that is a colorspace issue,
and maxwell treats it in the same way, so the same map will displace differently in RGB than in greyscale;
actually using offset 0,41 was the closest I could get to displacement 0 at K59% ( 41+59=100)
everything was done in 16bit saved as .png

the value for the flat top of the flat box here is 128, offset 0,5 and the bowl at no point has a value above 127.. but still there is a rise and at the edges too:



does somebody know a way to completely "clip" the displacement via a grey value for parts of the texture when using offset?

thanks,
daniel

[Mihai]

In PS, Edit>Color Settings change Gray to 'Gray Gamma 2.2' instead of Dot Gain 10% or 20%, you should then be able to make accurate maps.

[polynurb]

that makes sense..

thanks Mihai!