no longer 8 vs 16 bit options in sbsbaker?

[JoseConseco]

In older version of batch tools there were options for 8 vs 16 bit normal maps, height maps.
Are those options gone in CLlineTools for good?
Everything, even ao, is not 16 bit format, for png at least?
For tga outputs are 8 bit (tested just ao and normal)

[Naëlle]

Which tool are you referring to ?  For the sbsrender, this is normal because the *.sbsar files are tied to the bit depth. Although newer versions have option --output-bit-depth wich allows you to change the bit-depth of the result (not the bit-depth used to compute the render).

For sbsbaker, I've re-installed a 5.6 version of the batchtools and I cannot see any option related to the bit depth with for sbsbaker - the bakers compute in 32-bits float and the result is cast to highest information bitrate the storing format supports.  So, if you're saving to PNG, you should have 16-bits/channel images.  I have that behaviour with either the tools from substance designer 5.6 or the tools from substance automation toolkit 2017.2.1.

[JoseConseco]

I'm reffering to sbsbaker.
In  5.x series there was bit-depth parameter for normal map (8 vs 16 bit) but I guess I was imagining things. I just opened old bakes (from 5.x batchtools)  and they are 16 bit per channel.
Same in substance automation toolkit 2017.2.1  output png are 16 bit, but tga outputs is giving 8 bit.
http://prntscr.com/ha1c6j
Shouldn't they both  be 8 bit ?

[Cyrille Damez]

As far as I know, tga does not support 16bpc, but png does.
sbsbaker exports in the largest bit-depth allowed by the file format.

[julien.heijmans]

Would you guys not be willing to consider adding a --bitdepth parameter ? That would probably be useful for users, avoiding having to do that conversion with other python libraries, or even manually ?

32bit tiff file can get quite large to store and are not always properly supported in game engines... And it would probably not be a huge task to add to the SAT.