Blend Swap
Combine Normal Maps Node Setup For Cycles
by Blend Swap
Last crawled date: 8 years, 2 months ago
Combine Normal Maps Node Setup For Cycles. Normal maps store the vectors for normals as colors. The vector consists of X, Y and Z values. X and Y values can be positive and negative, however if Z value is negative, that would mean the normal turns to the other side of the surface(would be flipped) so, the Z value in normal maps differs and always is only positive, that's why all the trouble combining them. In normal maps Z value is represented by B channel's values from 0 to 1, X and Y negative values are represented in the R and B channels from 0 to 0.5, and positive from 0.5 to 1. So. To merge RGB normal vector data we need to blend R and G using overlay and average B values. The numerical RGB values from the texture should be taken as they are, so we don't want them to be changed by color management and we set the texture mode to non-color data.