How do I load image and generate PBR maps?

What maps do you have available? Just color? It's not possible to generate any real height or specular data from a color map, so you'll just have to improvise. Create a new filter, load in whatever maps you have and manipulate them in some way to approximate the other maps. Using the PBR filter type in the result component, connect the maps into their corresponding inputs and export the PBR maps.

I think NASA has at least color, height and land/water maps available, so you should use those if possible. FF will generate a normal map from height. Specular reflectivity and roughness can be approximated by combining the land/water and color maps.

If you need help, let me know.

Thanks for the feedback emme and SpaceRay.

I was able to find the maps I needed on the NASA Blue Marble repository, which I had missed the first time looking. But I’d still really love to see if there is anyway to do this in FF and what the setup might be. I haven’t done anything with FF nodes beyond the most rudimentary stuff.

I did try loading the image inside a filter using a set up as in the attached screen shot but got strange results. I imagine I really need to know what the different components do in order to effectively manipulate the input image for best results. Substance Bitmap2Material and its newer replacement, Alchemist, are great but they can only output power of 2 square images. They can’t be used for non-square panoramic images.

Thanks for the links SpaceRay – will read up to see what else I can do. Photoshop has a convert to Height map (or Normal Map) filter that worked ok. I just thought FF would already have had such a built-in component that might offer better controls. I also tried a Mac program called PBRtist (which integrates really well with Cheetah 3D). It can output non-square images but apparently can’t handle huge size panos.

This is very helpful, thanks emme!