in my scene the normal maps have no effect. I take the vray normalmap and apply a bitmap on it, but it doesn’t work like excepted. also the specular looks weird. what are good values to start, is it like in the bump map 30?
e.g. I apply a normalmap to the “vray normalmap” . 
best regards
themaxxer
have had problems with normal maps used on vray proxies , the vray normal map fixes this but it does look different to the max one.
as far as i understand the vraynormalmap is a helper for the vector displacement according to the changelog.
I never used it myself.
I used normal maps and vray successfully with the default max normal map loader. No need to use a normal map in a vraynormalmap. There you have a lot of options
that specify what kind of normal map you are using (world, tangent, etc…) also you can flip the color channels there. That should solve the problems that it somehow looks
wrong. It works well by trial an error in case you don´t know what kind of normal map you have.
If you have Input Gamma set to 2.2 in Max preferences, try to specify “Override 1.0” when you are loading images for the normal map.
There was an issue with normal maps on proxies, but this was supposed to be fixed in SP5 (when using the VRayNormalMap texture).
Best regards,
Vlado
This made my day
Ive also found that if you lower the blur on a normal map to its lowest setting, it can reduce the normal map’s look. Try keeping it @ 1.
Glad it helped
Normal maps are numeric channels, if you specify that they have a 2.2 gamma they get their values messed up when loaded.