Re: displacement by Darby Edelen on Dec 4, 2007 at 9:38:42 pm
There are some plug-ins that will take height maps and generate a displacement based on those. I believe one of Zaxwerks' plug-ins may have this capability, but I know that Conoa 3D Layer does (http://www.conoa.com).
Also, it should be possible to achieve similar, although less accurate and less flexible, results with the default Displacement Map effect in some circumstances. Something that has a smaller scale/is farther from the camera will appear to be compressed in the X and Y dimensions. In fact, everything on your monitor ends up with X and Y display coordinates, the Z coordinate in 3D is used to calculate the correct perspective for 2D projection of the 3D object.
This wouldn't be possible with a black/white height map through the Displacement Map effect though, you would need at least 2 colors to approximate correct perspective on both the X and Y axis. And it would really only be useful if there is no camera movement (which would change the scene's perspective but not the displacement map's).
Darby Edelen Designer Left Coast Digital Santa Cruz, CA
