Quote - I'm currently messing around with displacement maps, making them in ZBrush and rendering them in Poser 10.  It has me wondering, is there a recognised general intensity in Poser that vendors stick to?

Not that I'm aware of. The fact is that if your d-map is 8 bits per pixel, then you only have 256 levels at best for your fine-grained steps. It follows that for maximum fidelity, you want your lowest point to be black (0) and your highest point to be white (255). If the range of heights is squished into something smaller than 256 steps, you're going to get a bigger jump from one value to another. This may or may not matter, but I have seen terraces formed by not using enough range.

Given that the range from low to high will depend on the context, it becomes obvious that the best standard is no standard at all. You want to use the maximum range of the d-map to get the best (most smooth, stair-step-free) pattern you can. If that range spans 8 feet, then so be it. If it spans 2 mm, then so be it.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)