Gimp or Photoshop Question

[Cmd. Cheyd]

I have a PSD file that has the diffuse texture for an object in one layer, and the greyscale heightmap in another layer. I'm wanting to put the heightmap into the diffuse layer's alpha channel.... I can use GIMP or PS, and am moderately skilled with either... Once they're adequately merged, I'm going to use THAT layer as source for my normal map.

Someone?

Or am I doing something horribly wrong?

[Squeek]

Just don't cross the beams?

[Griff]

Here's a link to a pdf guide on how to merge a diffuse texture and a greyscale illumination map texture (this could just as easily be a greyscale heightmap texture) together using gimp
http://www.box.net/shared/jk87l4f0gw

I don't think you need to merge the 2 textures together, you could just feed your greyscale heightmap into the normalmap generating plugin for either photoshop & gimp
(link to Nvidia photoshop plugin: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/phot ... ugins.html)

Hmm,but after looking looking at the screen shot on the nvidia page:

of all the available options I wonder if those 'height source' options might be what you're after? to be honest, i haven't experimented with them at all, i just used the default settings!

[Cmd. Cheyd]

Griff - Those options (Alpha = Height) are why I'm wanting to import the heightmap into the diffuse map's alpha channel.

[Griff]

I don't know if the plugin is going to work correctly on an image with layers, I think your best bet would be to save out the diffuse texture and the greyscale height map as 2 seperate png's and merge them together in GIMP using the guide in my post above, then run the normal map plugin on the merged image and see if you can select the Alpha channel in the 'Height Source' options of the plugin

[Cmd. Cheyd]

Thanks Griff... I'll give it a go when I get home tonight.