I'm trying to render a depth map but with normalised values and I need it as a jpg (or png).

I've set my mantra node to have an extra image plane with a VEX value of Pz and a Float VEX Type. I've also changed the “Different File” extension to be “.jpg” since it seems that's how Houdini is deciding on the file type. It works fine.

When I export as a jpg and view it in Image Viewer, any value greater than 1 is clipped off at 1. So I can't normalised it in code since the data is lost.

I'm running it from a little python server so I need it to render to file.

Thanks!

May be you could use a kind of custom normalized Depth in AOV
like this :