How the height map generator works
A height map is a single grayscale channel where brightness means elevation — lighter is raised, darker is recessed. This tool reads your image’s luminance as that elevation, then gives you contrast, smoothing and invert controls to clean it up. Used as a bump map it perturbs lighting cheaply; used as a displacement map it moves real geometry. Runs entirely in your browser.
Height, bump, normal — which do you need?
For most surface detail you want a normal map; for camera-near surfaces and terrain you add a height map for true displacement. They’re related — a normal map is derived from a height field. See normal map vs bump map for the full breakdown, or generate the matching normal map from the same image.
Need the whole PBR material?
CraftPBR Studio turns a prompt or photo into albedo, normal, roughness, AO and metalness together — derived to agree. Free to try.
Open Studio →Frequently asked questions
How do I make a height map (or bump map) from an image?
Drop an image into the tool. It converts the image to grayscale where brightness represents elevation — lighter is higher, darker is lower. Adjust contrast for relief, add smoothing to remove noise, and invert if your surface reads the opposite way. Download the PNG. It all runs in your browser.
What is the difference between a height map and a bump map?
They are the same kind of image — a single grayscale channel encoding elevation. The difference is how the engine uses it: as a bump map it only perturbs lighting (cheap, no silhouette change); as a height/displacement map it actually moves geometry via tessellation (expensive, correct silhouettes). The PNG this tool produces works as either.
Why add smoothing?
Photographic noise becomes spiky, ugly relief once interpreted as height. A little smoothing (blur) removes the high-frequency noise while keeping the broad shapes, giving a cleaner displacement or bump result.
Is this height map generator free?
Yes — free, no sign-up, no watermark, nothing uploaded. It runs in your browser. For a normal map derived from the same height data, plus the rest of a PBR set, use CraftPBR Studio or the normal map tool.