Inconsistency in normal maps

V-Ray for Blender V-Ray for Blender :: Issues
1

Several things. Let’s go step by step.

I’ve noticed that for the normal map to work or be noticeable, you have to vary the intensity value from 1 to 100. Because with the default value there is no intensity; I work with metric system in cm, but I tried changing to meters and it’s the same, the value is not correctly assigned. I think…

I also noticed that the classic tangent space for normal maps is not working correctly, as seen in the images; on the contrary, I have to set it to object space or world space to see something more correct, because in tangent space it looks darkened and the poorly smoothed polygons are clearly visible.

Another thing I noticed is that if I create the material in Cycles with Node Wrangler and then convert it to V-Ray, everything seems to be correctly set up, I mean the sRGB values for the diffuse and raw for the rest once you convert it with the plugin (by the way, a very good tool).
But if you use Node Wrangler to load the maps directly and have them connected in the V-Ray node, Node Wrangler does its job, but it doesn’t set all the textures to sRGB and you have to change one by one those that don’t need it, which are almost all of them, thus losing the most valuable feature of Wrangler in my opinion.

Another thing I noticed, which is not important but curious: if I load the normal map image with Node Wrangler, it looks washed out in the node view, but if I load it by dragging and dropping it into the node editor, it apparently looks fine.

Well, I leave all these issues visible in two screenshots.

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11890×908 237 KB

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2

I discovered that the problem was that the Bitmap node sets “Auto” instead of “Linear”.
And when you convert a material made for Cycles with Node Wrangler, it already brings this setting correctly, but when you do it with Node Wrangler directly on the VRayMaterial, it doesn’t set it and that was the problem.

As for setting the normal map to 100, it’s not an issue for me really; I just wonder if such a high value is correct. I assume it should have the same relief as in Substance Painter, and with a default value of 1.0 it would be more accurate.

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31746×1215 356 KB

3

I discovered that for certain normal maps, there is a huge discrepancy between CPU and GPU rendering results. On CPU, a default value of 1 is sufficient to produce a good effect, whereas on GPU, a value as high as 100 may be required to achieve a comparable result.