Red wire when connecting my tga normal map bitmap to the normal node in SD

pixelquaternion

Hi guy's,

Just can't believe i have to ask here such a simple question but i am Googling for a solution for more than an hour without success and the substance designer documentation is useless on this.

I just have a series of normal map render from 3ds max in the tga format and i cannot connect them to the normal node, i know i can connect it directly to the normal output but i wont have the intensity slider from the normal node so is there something i am missing here?

Clark Coots

Normal node converts Greyscale data to a normal map. See how the Input is a Grey Circle? this means needs a grey input, your Bitmap is outputting color information (Orange circle output). This won't work. Do this instead:

Bitmap into Levels, Set Levels In Low and Levels in High + or - an equal amount in my case +0.4 in the Low and -0.4 in the High. That will boost your normal intensity without distorting any of the RGB channels. In order to control intensity and lessen the effect of the normals you can blend copy it with a neutral "normal color" node, default color is what you want. and play with the opacity intensity there.

pixelquaternion

Thank for the tip but it is not as effective as the intensity from the normal node i played with all the sliders and the change were almost not visible.

For me it would be quicker to use level in Photoshop and boosting each channels to the desired strength but it is again defeating the purpose of staying in one software.

poopipe

to make it stronger combine the normal with itself using a normal combine node - if it's too strong blend one of them with a flat normal direction using a normal blend node first.

as a rule, it's better to work with height information in substance,  you can generate a lot more stuff from it than a baked normal and layering is a lot more straightforward.

pixelquaternion

poopipe said:

to make it stronger combine the normal with itself using a normal combine node - if it's too strong blend one of them with a flat normal direction using a normal blend node first.

as a rule, it's better to work with height information in substance,  you can generate a lot more stuff from it than a baked normal and layering is a lot more straightforward.

Thank mate cool tips here and these were made long ago i and i didn't want to redo it again!