Maya 2018+ - best/correct way to bake displacement onto flat plane?

Polynaught

Hi,

I've got trouble getting a usable displacement bake from Maya.

introduction (you may skip it):
I am used to the transfer maps tool from Maya 2010 (which we used at work). With 2017 (or even earlier) AD removed mentalRay in favor for Arnold. This means no more baking of AO maps with the transfer maps tool. So I decided to give TURTLE a try to eventually use it for all map baking stuff.

problem:

I have modeled a single tile (cliff wall) which I attempt to bake down onto a flat plane to store the height information for further processing in world machine. However TURTLE not only skews/morphs the displacement map in an unexplainable way. It also seems to miss a number of rays resulting in parts of the map being transparent - but this could also just be a result of the morphing going on where parts of the data get crushed into the middle of the texture instead of being evenly distributed all over the squared uv range.

Since this technique is so crucial and widely used to for example create hard surface stamps/masks I really need a working solution. Can you spot some obvious mistakes in my setup? See attached file.

gnoop

Why not just render it from an ortho camera looking down

Polynaught

Thanks for the suggestion. This however further complicates the setup for something which should be only a few clicks and repeatable for many objects. For now I am using xNormal as a substitute for Maya's inbuilt bakers. I am open and willing to retry TURTLE when I get time.

poopipe

I'd use Arnold render to texture if it's enabled in 2017.