How to decrease the normal map strength?

zeitmeister · Post by **zeitmeister** » Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:51 am

Hi,
I wondered how to decrease the normal map strength.
Increasing or lowering the "multiplicator"-value (b) results in very strange effects.
Does someone know something...?

Thank you in advance!

Post by **OnoSendai** » Wed Jun 05, 2013 9:52 am

I don't think there is a way currently.
Would it be helpful?
I thought the whole point of normal maps was you didn't have to mess with this stuff

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Wed Jun 05, 2013 10:33 am

OnoSendai wrote:Would it be helpful?

Super helpfull! Tweaking 1001 times the settings in your favorite NormalMaps generator is quite time consuming and suck!

OnoSendai wrote:I thought the whole point of normal maps was you didn't have to mess with this stuff

Actually I don't know any other 3D app where you can't tweak the NM strength...

Also helpfull would be to allow NMs and Bump Maps to coexist!

NMs are generally used for the stronger shaping parts and BumpMapping for more subtle details.

wlf_alex · Post by **wlf_alex** » Wed Jun 05, 2013 11:35 am

zeitmeister · Post by **zeitmeister** » Wed Jun 05, 2013 6:15 pm

Everything said by Zom-B...

SaphireS · Post by **SaphireS** » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:56 am

galinette · Post by **galinette** » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:03 am

zeitmeister wrote:Hi,
I wondered how to decrease the normal map strength.
Increasing or lowering the "multiplicator"-value (b) results in very strange effects.
Does someone know something...?

Thank you in advance!

There is a simple solution : neutral normal map is (128,128,255) color.
So you could try to blend your NM with that color. I'm don't think you can do with Indigo, though, you need an image editor.

Etienne

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Jun 14, 2013 4:37 am

zeitmeister wrote:I wondered how to decrease the normal map strength.
Increasing or lowering the "multiplicator"-value (b) results in very strange effects.

I also noticed that the Gamma of the normal map is 1... strange for a RGB color map.
In the material window the preview also show a bleached out preview. But setting the gamma to 2.2 does let the texture preview look fine but your Rendered material the world turns upside down -.-'

galinette · Post by **galinette** » Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:24 am

Zom-B wrote:I also noticed that the Gamma of the normal map is 1... strange for a RGB color map.

That's because it's not a RGB color map... It stores XYZ vector coordinates, and as it results in a 3-channel texture, it's conveniently stored in a standard image format using RGB channels. Gamma!=1 has no meaning when not referring to colors.

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Fri Jun 14, 2013 6:01 am

then Gamma setting should be disabled for exporters + GUI and Preview corrected for the sake of simplicity and correctness