Hi everyone, I have a problem with displacement. I created a new material in UE5.5, activated tessellation, and then imported the textures that I created in Substance Painter. I exported them using the “Unreal Engine 5 Height + ORM” output template. In Unreal, I attached the maps, and every map works well except for the displacement one. My question is: does anyone know how the map from Substance Painter works? Because I had to set the “center” to 0.3, which seems strange to me, in order to get a somewhat decent result. If I set the magnitude to a value higher than 0.5, the object shrinks, but I thought displacement should push the vertices outward, not the opposite. In Substance Painter, I only used positive values for the height and set it to 0 where I didn’t need it.
If someone can help me, I would appreciate it. Thanks to anyone who answers.
Height Map in Substance Painter: Ensure your height map contains positive displacement values. Lighter is elevated area, and darker is depressed area
Unreal Engine Setup: The “center” value for Unreal’s displacement node likely must be altered. It being at 0.3 shifts the neutral point, but 0.5 is generally neutral for displacement. Play around with this to get the desired effect
Displacement Node & Tessellation: Make sure you’re using the correct displacement node and tessellation settings in Unreal, as tessellation is required for vertex displacement.
Scale and Magnitude: If increasing the magnitude causes shrinkage, the displacement map may need to be re-scaled or remapped in Unreal, ensuring positive values push vertices outward.
Adjust Height Map: You may have to modify the height map to better suit Unreal’s requirements (e.g., moving values or normalizing them)
Hey, buddy. Generally speaking, “center” is usually a fixed value, like 0.5 or 0. This serves as the baseline (median value) for displacement. For example, if your displacement median value is 0.5, then the parts of the texture with values less than 0.5 will appear to sink, while those exceeding 0.5 will seem to rise.
So, what you should do is determine a median value on your own, say 0 (usually this is the same as the median value you set when exporting from other DCC software). Then, achieve a satisfactory result by adjusting the texture or the parameters in the material graph, rather than fiddling with the median value. Set the median value to 0 or 0.5, and then play around with the material.