Weird Question: can I preview SP height to normal conversion in SD?

bitinn

Hi,

When you author a simple PBR material in Substance Designer, your height map will eventually be converted to normal when working in Substance Painter.

Is the process of conversion as simple as using a Normal or Normal Sobel node with intensity set to X? How I can preview roughly the same result in Designer?

(EDIT: It seem like using Normal Sobel with Intensity 5; But IF the height map passthrough a Base Material node, make sure Height Position is 0.5 and Height Range is 1 to get the same result...)

bitinn

Actually, can someone explain to me: why my height map looks different in SD from SP? A bug? Because the converted normal map in SP looks fine.

This leads to another problem: I can't seem to find a constant Normal Sobel intensity in SD that always give me the same Normal output as the automatic Height 2 Normal conversion in SP. I can get one material to match but the same value will be wrong when dealing with another material.

bitinn

Hmmm, so it looks like not only Height Position and Range affects Normal output, but also any Transform on normal map.

I put the Normal Sobel output through a Material Transform with 25% width and height. And for reasons I don't fully understand, it results in the need to increase Normal Sobel intensity, from 5 to 20 (exactly 1 / 0.25 = 4 times), to get the same result as Height 2 Normal conversion in SP.

poopipe

I'm pretty confident sp isn't using sobel for the conversion. Try using a standard normal node. 

Height in sp is signed so the range goes from -1 to 1 rather than 0 - 1

Also,  fwiw I try not to mix normal and height outputs from the same material in Painter. Things are a lot simpler if you stick to height. 

bitinn

poopipe said:

I'm pretty confident sp isn't using sobel for the conversion. Try using a standard normal node. 

Height in sp is signed so the range goes from -1 to 1 rather than 0 - 1

Also,  fwiw I try not to mix normal and height outputs from the same material in Painter. Things are a lot simpler if you stick to height. 

Thx, yeah I am not mixing normal and height, I always just pick one. But height isn't viewable as normal in SD; so what I am trying to do is to create a normal output that will be the same as the height -> normal conversion in SP.

Added benefit: I can expose an intensity control for Normal, so if I am not happy with the height -> normal in SP, I can switch to actual normal and adjust intensity.