Displacement map

A grayscale texture that stores height information, projected onto a highly-tesselated mesh in order to create displaced surface detail. Also called a Height Map.

Displacement map example from ZBrush

Displacement maps are usually saved in a floating-point file format like 16- or 32-bit TIFF/TGA/EXR, because standard 8-bit grayscale images only have 256 levels of gray which often causes height information to be lost.

• Rendering ZBrush Displacement-Maps In External Renderers thread on ZBrushCentral
  Displacement rendering methods in multiple applications.
• See also NyraCharacter, Vector displacement map.

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