What choices do I have to bake "16-bit, grayscale PNG" displacement?

littleclaude

Hello

Can you help, I was wondering what choices do I have to bake 16 bit displacement? 

• 16-bit, grayscale PNG file.

• 16-bit, grayscale .RAW file in little-endian byte order.

Currently my work around is to bake in Mudbox to a 16 or 32 bit texture and then convert the texture output in Nuke to the file format I need but I wondered if there is a better work around?

If substance painter could bake it down that would be ideal for me.

almighty_gir

The loss of precision between 32 and 16 bit is probably not going to be noticed at all, so i'd just bake straight out at 16 bit. Not sure why all the need for converting formats though... Does mudbox not bake directly to PNG at 16 bit?

littleclaude

Hi, correct Mudbox does not give me the option for 16 bit PNG so I need a work around. Below are my options.
I will go and have a look into ZBrush and see what the export options are, back in a bit.

almighty_gir

I guess any of the floating point options would work, and then convert them as needed, photoshop, gimp, any image editing suite will do the job for that part really.

Eric Chadwick

This kind of stuff belongs in Technical Talk instead of General Discussion, moving it for you. Spank spank and all that.

littleclaude

Photoshop does not come up with many options to convert 16 bit textures and I need 16-bit, grayscale PNG file. I have not tried it from gimp! I will have a look. 

At the moment the only programme that can view, edit and give multiple export choices is Nuke. 

Prime8

It's possible to bake grayscale 16-bit integer PNG files in Blender, if you don't mind using it.
Krita is able to convert into that format as well.

Cannot help with RAW, don't have access to Blender or Krita right now.

Bek

littleclaude said:

Photoshop does not come up with many options to convert 16 bit textures and I need 16-bit, grayscale PNG file.

You shouldn't need to 'convert' anything, just open the 16bit .whatever file in PS, image -> mode -> greyscale, save as, png.

musashidan

Zbrush doesn't bake .png but, as @Bek says, just resave as .png in PS.

rube

Photoshop will save a 16bit png, but not a 32. So If you're loading a 32bit image drop it down to 16bit first.

littleclaude

Cool, thanks everyone I will look into after work tonight, also hats of to Blender

Photoshop does not give me any options when I save the PNG apart from the settings below. So is it a case that if its a 16bit Tiff and I do a  save as PNG Photoshop will know to keep it as 16bit?

Also Nuke allows me to tweak, refine and customize the image but Photoshop can not even view the image, so that why I was put off using it but I will try it again tonight as it will be quicker for tests.

Bek

littleclaude said:

So is it a case that if its a 16bit Tiff and I do a  save as PNG Photoshop will know to keep it as 16bit?

Yes. Though I'm wondering why you didn't just try it if you already had the save dialogue open...

pior

This is confusing - the thread title makes it sound as if you *have* to use PNG. But why would you bother with this format in the first place ? Tiff is quite straightforward to use for displacement.

ActionDawg

littleclaude said:

Photoshop does not give me any options when I save the PNG apart from the settings below. So is it a case that if its a 16bit Tiff and I do a  save as PNG Photoshop will know to keep it as 16bit?

Photoshop will not let you save into a format that doesn't support the current workspace. You can see the difference when switching any document from 8 to 16 to 32 bit and clicking save as.