What are the dangers of bump normal maps?
The dangers of bump/normal maps are that we don’t directly see them like we would a color map, instead we see more how the light bouncing off the surface has changed because of them. That means it isn’t always immediately obvious what the problem with the bump/normal map might be, where the problem stems from or how to fix it.
What does a bump map look like in Blender?
Notice the strange swirly mosaic tiled look to the middle cube. Those artifacts aren’t there without the normal map (on the left) or on the high resolution mesh that was used to bake the normals from (on the right). Here’s another example using an 8 bit bump map on a simple plane…
When to use normal mapping instead of bump mapping?
The lower-res version of model can then omit the very fine level of geometry detail that is now stored in the normal maps, so that it can be rendered using the normal mapping instead. A typical use case for this would be to show the bumped detail of creases, buttons, buckles and seams on a characters clothing.
What should roughness be for bump / normal maps?
Above is that same central cube from before but instead of a very low roughness setting of just 0.05 here we’re hiding a lot of the artifacts in the 8 bit image with a roughness value of 0.4 So in conclusion for proper versatility make sure we have that 32 bit float checkbox enabled for bump/normal maps!
Can a bump map be converted to a normal map?
So as shown a height map used for a bump node and that same height map converted to a normal map and then plugged in a normal map node will shade differently.
What does 32 bit normal map look like?
One interesting thing to note is that the 32 bit normal map looks a bit pale and lighter than we’re used to. It would be useful to be able to view it in the more typical darker shades like we had with the 8 bit image and I wouldn’t be surprised if that option returns soon too.