Displacement texture behaves different in 3ds max compared to Photoshop

[wilbertvandenbroek]

Hi all,

I'm running into a weird problem with Max and Photoshop. Some background info, we are trying to import Browzwears VStitcher models in 3ds max. All textures are baked and exported as png's except for the displacement which are 16 bit Tiff files.
We see that the exported displacement maps have very little visible displacement, almost invisible to see. When I open them in Photoshop and really crank up the levels we get a decent map to use in Max. So far so good.

I would like to do the same in Max as Photoshop in order to save the hassle of converting all displacements. Setting the corona displacement modifier to a higher number doesn't work here because it blows up the entire model. I tried many different color correction nodes, LUT's exported from Photoshop, curves you name it and each time the resulting map is different from what Photoshop does. There seems to be a different way in handling the color correction in Max.

I have attached some images to make things clear, also the original displacement map to see for yourself.

[romullus]

Don't use photoshop, or colour correction in 3ds Max on displacement maps. You are simply destroying perfectly normal texture. The correct way of using displacement, is dead simple - load the texture with gamma override = 1.0 (this is very important!!) and use displacement min/max level in Corona material, or in Corona displacement mod. And that's it!! You don't need any level or contrast boosting, since that's simply renders height data incorrect. The only thing you should pay attention at, is where is your displacement texture's mid point - if it's 0,5 grey, then make sure that min and max levels has the same value in Corona displacement.

[wilbertvandenbroek]

Hi Romullus, thanks for the very fast reply. This indeed solves the problem, thanks man.
I do see when pushing the values really far the artifacts that happen when working in the incorrect way.

[romullus]

That is most likely because the displacement texture has been authored in fundamentally wrong way. I'm afraid there's not much you can do about that, except for using small amount of blurring and try to mask artifacts that way (unless you have access to source materials and can re-bake displacement properly). I also highly recommend to use Corona bitmap instead of Max bitmap for displacement textures since it has superior texture filtering and that can make huge difference in displacement.

[romullus]

By the way, you can try to do local blurring in photoshop by targeting only bad areas, while leaving detailed stitch untouched, just make sure to not lower texture's bit depth and don't do any levels, brightness and contrast manipulation on the image, just a mild blurring where artifacts shows. If you'll do things properly, i think it's quite possible to salvage the texture.