Displacement Map
Actual geometry from a texture
Also known as: Height map · Vector displacement
Definition
A displacement map actually moves vertices along their normal at render time, generating real geometry where a normal map only fakes lighting. Used heavily in offline rendering (film) and in real-time when GPU tessellation is available — terrain detail, snow accumulation, parallax-correct stone. Unlike normal maps, displacement produces correct silhouettes from any viewing angle but is far more expensive to render.
In production
UE5 supports displacement via World Position Offset on materials or via Nanite's native displacement on tessellated meshes, introduced as a first-class feature so artists can add real geometric detail to Nanite meshes without baking it into the base mesh. Unity exposes it via the Surface Inputs in HDRP, using either a heightmap-driven vertex displacement shader or the newer Tessellation stage. Author the map at 16-bit precision to avoid stair-stepping — an 8-bit displacement map produces visible banding on gentle slopes because there are only 256 discrete height steps available. ZBrush is the standard tool for sculpting displacement detail, exporting via the "Multi Map Exporter" at 16-bit or 32-bit float precision, then baked down in Substance Painter or xNormal against a low-poly cage. A common pitfall is baking displacement without a sufficiently tessellated target mesh — a flat quad with a high-frequency displacement map will look faceted no matter how detailed the map is.
