In Vue, I can use a height map to make a terrain, then transform it into an obj. How can I do the reverse ? I'd like to make a scene with several characters, then make an height map out of it, edit this map, and then use it as a displacement map on a wall to make an old bas-relief effect. Any help is welcome. Thanks in advance.

You can do it in MAX. There is a dohickywhatsnamethingamy that does it for you. Failing that load the model into Poser and turn on the depth cueing. I don't think its absolutely accurate but could give reasonable results.

Attached Link: http://www.techmind.org/stereo/shints.html

Maybe you find some tips here...

You're asking how to do this in Vue, right? Not Poser? It's really easy in Vue. You just render normally, then click the little "Z" button on the render window - "Display last render (Depth)" is the tooltip for it. You'll probably have to invert the image (depending on what program you want to use it in), but that's no big deal. I don't know any way to do it in Poser.

In Poser, strip all of your figures textures off, set the diffuse and highlights to pure black, and the ambient to pure white. Set the background color to black and turn on depth cueing. You don't even have to mess with your lights. If you align a cylinder with the camera, then you can adjust its scale and position to get more control over the effect. Of course set it's transparency (both min & max) to 100% as well as turning highlights off so it won't show in the render ( just turning visibility off doesn't work).

If you have bryce you can render the picture like the one batronyx did as well.

Thanks everyone for your advice and tips. (sorry for the late answer : my ADSL has been down for a week). Bathronyx : could you expand on the way I can get more control over the effect you mention by using a cylinder ? Thanks in advance.

I think he means that the black to white range encopasses all objects in the scene, so by having a fully transparent object (not necessarily a cylinder) that you can scale or translate that object to control the overall depth of your scene which means you can control whether your main objects of interest run from black to white or from some shade of grey to white. With the picture above for example, you could make the freak occupy only the 70% grey to white range and have him on a black background, which might work better for doing a bass relief.

I think that's what he's talking about, anyway, but I haven't tried it so I'm just speculating really.

Thanks Ajax. That's exactly what I mean. And you're right about the cylinder not being necessary, I just find it more convenient than say. . . two spheres; one behind the subject and one in front. I just orient the cylinder lengthwise along the camera's line of sight, and then parent it to the camera. If I want to dim the bright/near parts I move it closer to the camera. If I want to brighten the dark/far parts of my subject, I move it away. And if I want to do both I move the cylinder closer to the camera and then scale it to extend past my subject. compiler, or anybody reading for that matter, if you need more explanation let me know and I'll post some more illustrations. P.S. I feel for you; my cable was out for three days this week. I'm still playing catch-up.

OK. I think I got the idea. Thanks to everyone for your help. and now, I'm off to install all the stuff I missed this week... Poserhaolic ? Me ? ;)