Hi everyone! I wrote a tool called Height Lab that lets you create square height maps and normal maps from expressions. I mostly wrote it for Technical Artists so that the textures could be used in shaders, but it can also be good for creating height and normal maps for other things like: brushes, height maps for terrain, and particles.
Here’s the blurb from Steam:
Height Lab is a developer tool that makes it possible to visualize and create height maps and normal maps using math. Its layout is like a paint program, but the layers are expressions instead of images. Once a height map is designed, both height maps and normal maps can be saved as: JPG, PNG, TGA, EXR16, EXR32, EXR16SRGB, or EXR32SRGB.
Height Lab is good for procedurally creating height maps, normal maps, brushes (normal and height), particles, and masks. These are good for: games, simulators, 2D and 3D paint programs, shader effects, and various unique transition effects.
FEATURES
- Laid out similar to a paint program.
- Preview changes live.
- Quality of life Undo/Redo and Shortcut Keys.
- Includes examples.
- Expressions can be separated into layers.
- Layers can be enabled/disabled, and soloed for single layer viewing.
- Multiple height maps can be designed in a single project.
- Custom variables can be created and used in expressions.
- Built in functions for: sphere, cone, pyramid, and sweep.
- Viewport area for previewing the height map in 2D and 3D.
- Height map can be animated in both u and v directions.
- Height map can be “dissolved” from top to bottom.
- Supported output types are: height map (including normalized) and normal map (GL and/or D3D).
- Outputs can be saved as: JPG, PNG, TGA, EXR16, EXR32, EXR16SRGB, or EXR32SRGB.
- The output size can be powers of two from 32x32 all the way up to 4096x4096.
You can get it from Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2810890/Height_Lab/
If you have any feedback, please post either here or directly in the Height Lab Discussion on Steam.
Thanks, and I hope you find it really useful!
