Thanks for reminding me of this. Have you watched the first season? I was browsing though and it seems to dive deep into scripting which can be intimidating.
Haha :D We are currently working on a script to supplement the tutorial. It automatically sets up the displacement for you in Maya, should be done in a few days :)
This technique could possibly work, though you might have to hand paint the vertex colors rather than use the script that is suggested in the tutorial.
@Mark Dygert Might the script you're remembering be called TurboReverse? https://mariussilaghi.com/products/turboreverse There's also this: https://mariussilaghi.com/products/subd-recovery
It shouldn't take tooo much effort to script it (planar project from origin then offset by the object's position). But yeah, shame it's not like that straight up.