Metrics in depth-maps?

[JCano]

Hello everybody!

I'm doing some tests with the Substance Designer surface scanning workflow. At the moment I have mounted a scanning rig with a Canon EOS 5D camera and four flashs arranged in a cross about 45 cm from the camera and oriented 45 degrees. The visual result of the normal and depth maps is very good, but I have a question: does the generated depth-map have any metric representation? That is, if I can define the pixel-size of the input images, could you assume that each gray value equates to a metric distance in relation to said pixel-size?

Just to clarify the intent, I am used to working with 32-bit depthmap images where each intensity value has an associated height value in mm. I would like to know how I could get that measurement from the Substance output.



Any information that sheds some light in this regard is welcome!

[Esger van der Post]

Are you using the normal to height node to generate your height?
If so, I don't believe it gives true-to-life results, so height ratio's within the resulting heightmap won't necessarily be true to the real thing.