Height map from Mesh in Blender

[trappistplanets]

you can use this .blend file to help you make height maps from already existing or your own models (for 2.70!!)

how to use
first open it
you should see a mesh of Wild 2
and nodes below that

first, you need to switch "blender render" to "cycles render"
then go into the node editor at the bottom, and hit "a" to select all the nodes at the bottom
hit Ctrl+C to copy them
then delete the wild 2 mesh, and import your mesh you want to process a height map from
and after importing your mesh, give it a new material
now past the nodes you copied before by hitting Ctrl+V
after they appear you can delete the 2 nodes your new material added to the node editor
then go into render view and hit "0" to go to the camera view (do not mess with camera posission, if you do, that will mess you up, if your model is not centered in the middle just move it there not the camera
just mess and learn what each node setting does, in addition to this you can also mess with the scale of the model untill you get a result you like

then in the render settings, change the "Resolution" to 4096x2048
and if you have the slider bar set at 100% that will give you a 4k texture but if you keep it at 50% that will give you a 2k texture
then render your map and then export it by hitting F3 on your keyboard

after exporting please do the stuff below
your going to need to flip your map in a photoediting program wth the flip tool
and you may also need to mess with the offset to get it to line up to your diffuse texture


you don't need to credit me for this if you do use it



here is the download link

height map set up.zip

(2.18 MiB) Downloaded 204 times

[John Van Vliet]

here is a 8 bit copy of the 32 bit float displacement map for wild 2

std multi res blender bake using the older 2.7
( in 2.92 you have to use the camera and it dose not work on spherical objects)

[trappistplanets]

( in 2.92 you have to use the camera and it dose not work on spherical objects)

hmm...it should work on spherical objects, but its harder

Added after 2 minutes 8 seconds:

here is a 8 bit copy of the 32 bit float displacement map for wild 2

did you flip and fix the offset of that to line it up with the mosayic?
(i already did a wild 2 DEM)

Added after 9 minutes 21 seconds:
yes it does work on spherical objects, you just haft to edit the scale of your model, and mess with the 2nd color ramp in front of the invert node

converted from 3d asteroid catalog mesh with blender and flip fixed in gimp

converted from 3d asteroid catalog mesh with blender and flip fixed in gimp

proof

raw render (no photo editing program fixes yet)

[trappistplanets]

( in 2.92 you have to use the camera and it dose not work on spherical objects)

now that i am reading this better, that why i said for 2.70!! in the descripton bc it may not work correctly in later or previous versions