I have default document, a plane, and a very nicely working OSL node-edited texture, nothing else modified. At the end there’s 3 options. For the colors on the plane, I plugged the end result (being the color ramp) into the surface option of the material output.
However, I also notice there is this “displacement” option in the material output. So I plugged a second plug from the color ramp into that, and nothing happens. How do I get the node editor to make a height map out of the exact same color scheme that it perfectly renders? I don’t want to bake it because then it’s not dynamic. If I change the shading in the node editor I want the corresponding height map to actively change as well, which the colors already do in the render viewport.
Displacement is by default turned off (just simulates bump), so you should go to the material’s properties, Settings>>Surface>>Displacement , and set it to ‘Displacement’.
Also, displacement is a vector, so pluging a color_ramp into it, won’t probably result in what you expect.
More could be said, but we really don’t know what your ‘very nicely working OSL’ does…
Whatever you said is factually incorrect. Aside form that there are thousands of “settings” in Blender, I looked in the most obvious ones in the material properties under the surface tab and no combination of any changes to the displacement there changed anything about the mesh in any way whatsoever.
That’s irrelevant. If it is a point-object then it tells blender to translate each point in space according to the color. If it’s a vector, then it says to add an (0,0,z) vector to according to the color. Either way, points move vertically by the color in the same pattern.
Geometry → mapping → ColorRamp → material output. Not really anything to it, it’s just a basic color ramp setup like I said, produces nice smooth colors.
If you say so, than please discard everything below…
???
With vector displacement, a point will be translated to (x,y,z). If you plug a color instead of a vector, the translation will be (r, g, b). As colors by default are positive only, and vectors can also be negative, all your displacement will just be pointing to the (+x,+y,+z) quadrant.
For a displacement of (0,0,z) you need to multiply your color with (0,0,1).
Vectors to floats, as in ‘Mapping->ColorRamp’, is not common and pretty strange to do… (it produces a diagonal in (1,1,1) direction, because all components are just turned into the medium value between them (x+y+z/3))…
