Height map from mesh - can't disable automatic normalisation.

[joshshort]

I'm trying to bake a terrain heightmap which is then used to displace in-game terrain geometry. Complete precision is required because other scene objects snap to this terrain at specific heights, so my black, mid grey and white values need to be accurate.

The problem I am having is that although when I add a new baker to the stack, I am able to turn off automatic normalisation, the output is still getting normalised. When I go back and open the dialog again, automatic normalisation is ticked and I am unable to untick it. Is this a bug? We have 5.5.2 and 5.5.1 here and the problem occurs with both.

I've also noticed that max frontal / rear distances keep getting reset to 1.0 as well, but I am using a cage to set my range anyway.

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

Hi,

If you right click on the baked resource (bitmap) / Rebake, then change any value, the changes won't be stored.
You should right click on the mesh resource / bake model information instead. This way the parameters will be stored in the mesh resource.

[joshshort]

I always open the baker dialog by right clicking the low poly mesh I want to bake to.

Here's what happens:

http://imgur.com/a/edKYX

Like I say, even when I add a new baker and turn off normalisation, when I bake the mesh for the first time it is getting normalised.

(I know these screenshots show an unsaved graph, but I tried it with a saved graph too, so it's not that!)

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

Ok it's definitely a bug.

Btw what would you expect for a non normalized image if the values are out of the [0, 1] range ?
Clamp for a 8/16bit image ?

[joshshort]

Thanks! At least I know we're not doing something stupid now (which is frequently heh).

Any values outside of the bounding box / cage should just remain at 0 or 1 respectively I guess? So you still have a usable render. Perhaps a warning if stuff is out of range would be good though?

[Nicolas Wirrmann]

Well, out of [0, 1] range can be stored in a file that supports 32bit (tif, hdr, exr).
So I'd not display a warning.