Let Height Slider Go Negative

When using multi-channel layers, sometimes you want to set the Height channel to a negative value, but the slider for it only ever displays positive values. The only way to make get a negative height value is to right-click the slider and punch in the number manually.

Justification

Negative height values are perfectly valid when converted to a normal map, and having to either punch in negative values manually or bend over backward to create indents by overwriting positive values adds unnecessary friction to the workflow.

Implementation Details

The change can be implemented in one of two ways: either simply remap the slider for Height values from -1 to 1, or allow users to remap sliders themselves. Ideally, if the user punches in a manual value outside the range of a slider, the slider should be remapped automatically to accommodate it.

Hello @RecursiveSweatpants and welcome to our community!

Thank you for your feature request. I have passed this along internally.

I wanted to mention that the layering engine uses FR16, full-range 16bit which means that the height values can go almost infinitely up or down. You could, for example, set the blend mode for a layer’s height channel to Subtract and dig into the surface even if the base height is already at the black point of 0.

This decal’s height channel has been set to subtract, while the base blue layer’s height is already at 0%.

You could then set another layer to Subtract and continue to dig in further for example with this multi-channel brush.

And even go further with another layer.

Thanks again for your post!