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.
Just tried the scripts and they work only on a library of function that is outdated and no longer available anyway planned for max 4 ... so is there another way atm ?