Need to create a heightmap or bumpmap - RealWorld forums

I have a brick texture I want to make a bumpmap for. Is there some way to create a heightmap or normal map with RealWorld Paint, or can someone point me to a plugin for it? I've been making my heightmaps manually or with the shadow and outline tools so far, but that's quite a hassle for a 1024x1024 image.

Well, in principle, this is impossible, because the height-map/normal-map contains different information than the color texture. Though, if you have a photograph of something, you usually do not have a pure color map, because real light sources illuminate the scene and a photograph is a rendering of the reality. There may be ways to extract the true color map plus a normal map from more than one photograph of the same object ideally under different lighting conditions or from a different angle (like a short video). More here: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?256152-get-bumpmap-heightmap-from-a-photo

What you can do directly in RWPaint is just what the Bevel effect does - that means estimate the height from the transparency. The more distant from an edge something is, the higher it is assumed to be. If you erase the space between the bricks and run the following script (via the Effect->Custom operation command), you may get a decent normal map.

var bevel = Operation.Create("Raster Image - Bevel");
bevel.Output = "Normal map";
bevel.Amount = 20;
bevel.Blur = 5;
Operation.Execute(bevel, Document);

You may want to experiment with the Amount and Blur parameters.

Thanks mate