Hi, I've found multiple tools to generate a tangent space normal map on the differences of a low polygon base mesh and a high polygon detail mesh. I'm looking for the same thing but for height maps to be used in parallax occlusion mapping shaders. Any ideas how to realize this the best way? My favorite thing would be something like NVIDIA melody but which exports the height maps in the alpha channel of the normal map. thank you

Quote: Original post by quasty
Hi,

I've found multiple tools to generate a tangent space normal map on the differences of a low polygon base mesh and a high polygon detail mesh. I'm looking for the same thing but for height maps to be used in parallax occlusion mapping shaders.

Any ideas how to realize this the best way? My favorite thing would be something like NVIDIA melody but which exports the height maps in the alpha channel of the normal map.

thank you

if you use 3ds max, 7 and up have the option to generate a heightmap into the alpha channel of the generated normal map. or you could create the normal map, then copy it, desaturate it completly, invert it and stick that into the alpha channel of your normal map. however the first option would produce better results.
that is unless your question is how to generate normal maps from heightmaps. for this you can get a photoshop plugin that'll do this, i belive it also works in gimp.