I need to find out if i can get some 3D software to create a depth map. It needs to speed things up, I dont wont to draw one up in photoshop. I also need to apply the depth map in software to create the 3D depth. Im in the stereo imaging business (Lenticular) and would find it very useful to achieve this. Any feed back would be appreciated. Regards Carl PS. Dont get confused with depth of field.

In most software, you take the original texture template for the object and color it in, ranging from black to white. Sometimes you can just convert the texture map to greyscale. Then black can be 100% negative displacement and white can be 100% positive displacement, but you can usually reverse or mitigate it in the texture or materials channels.

Vue does it, and you can get Vue d'esprit 4 for 69 dollars now from e-on software. It also is very poser friendly

Bryce can make depth maps.

Vue Esprit automatically renders a depth map whenever you render a scene, and its capable of importing Poser figures (I guess thats why your post is in the poser section)

Terragen will do it.....for free. http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/ There is also worldmachine.....also free. http://www.world-machine.com/

thanks for the reply guys im currently looking into them.