Here are two images of tests I did that show some issues in smeared_heightmap_dk2.
- Smearing mode: Lightness Strength has almost no effect when Color Rate is 100, heightmap channel appears to be initialized to 0 instead of 0.5 gray.
The Lightness Strength issue shown is probably exaggerated by the extreme brush I’m using, and I haven’t tested yet with more normal brushes to see if it’s an issue with them. I’d be curious to try changing the blending mode to COMPOSITE_COPY instead, and see if that fixes the issue. I’ll do more testing with other brushes later to see if it’s a real issue or not.
The bigger issue here I see is where the (SR 50, CR 0, LS 0) brush crosses the LS 0 vertical line, and the (SR 50, CR 100, LS 0) brush crosses the blank spaces between the lines. I’m pretty sure the fact that these are black, and not the appropriate color (blue in the first case, red in the second), is because the heightmap channel is initialized as blank, or 0. For this to work properly, it needs to be initialized at Neutral Gray (0.5).
- Dulling Mode: Lightness Strength has very little effect again (opposite to smearing, though), heightmap smearing seems to have issues.
Here, the Lightness Strength issue seems to be opposite of Smearing mode. It seems to work from 100% down to 50%, but after that it acts like Lightness Strength is basically 0. Again, I haven’t tested this with more normal brushes yet, so this might not be as much of an issue as it appears here. As with the other mode, I would be curious if changing the composite mode could fix the issue (assuming it is a real issue).
I’m not entirely sure what is happening with the heightmap smearing in this case. I’m assuming it’s using the dulling algorithm with the heightmap smear, and that might not work with this. Once the issue with initializing the heightmap to black is fixed, I’d like to try this again, and see if it still has issues. I have a feeling that even if that fixes it so it does something more predictable than what we see here, brush makers may still prefer to have the heightmap use smearing mode instead of dulling, even when dulling is the color mode chosen.