Layering Normal maps with different strength - wrong display

[akos_kiss]

Hi!

I've been having issue with creating layered normal maps with the vray node material.
I would like to create a layered normal map stack, with different normal maps and different normal multiplier strengths.

Unfortunately the layer node is doing something strange with the normal map node and does some transformation.
If i run the normal map through the layer shader the result is different than if I plug in the normal map node into the material directly.

I attached to screenshot of the issue.

Blending, layering normal maps with different strength is an important feature. Am I doing something wrong or is there an other way around this issue?

[deyan.hadzhiev]

Hi akos_kiss in order for this to work you need to set up the bump type in the material to explicit. Notice how when you have the normal map connected directly the types are disabled, because the "explicit" type is used by the material implicitly, because it detects it is connected directly to a normal map node:



When another node (different than Normal Map) is connected to the material, the type is again left as a user option, because it can not predict what exactly is being connected to the node. This means that the "Explicit Normal" bump type has to be selected manually:



Just as an additional remark - since the normal map node actually produces a vector result, you will probably need to enable the negative values in the layered node to actually achieve the same results:

[akos_kiss]

Hi deyan.hadzhiev!

Thank you for the fast reply! I totally missed the allow negative colors checkbox!