Create Proper Color Separation on Cloth Stitches?

bentraje

Hi, 

I have this normal details baked from Zbrush.
Problem is Normal details gets lost when applying a color
So I guess, the only way to accentuate is to have separate colors on those details.

My problem is how?

I tried the following masking

(1) Metal Edge Wear Generator 

(2) Dirt Wear Generator

(3) Curvature Map (Direct Plug)

(4) Ambient Occlusion (Direct Plug) 

But none seems to work effectively. They are either covering the whole mesh (even when constrast/levels are adjusted) or  rudimentary (stitches are not all evenly masked)

Is there a way around this?

Thank you for looking at the problem.

You can see an illustration of the problem 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4kftoljuer68yj6/SPSD005_color_separation.jpg?dl=0

poopipe

ok,

The first thing is that your normals aren't very intense so you're not going to get much from curvature and AO which is how all the generators work - the best fix is to sculpt the seams more 

The second thing the denim material you're applying appears to have really intense height/normals which will naturally obliterate the comparitively weak normals from your sculpt - you can solve that by reducing the opacity of the height/normals in the material layer. 

demonslayer

as poopipe said,your seams are very very fine, so if your bakes dont catch them strong enough,the generators wont at all grab it.
You could resculpt them in zbrush with a RGB (white) on the brush.This way you could export a mask if you have your UVs in Zbrush.
your Substance Normal setup is on "Combine" i assume,when seeing your red generators there in the screenshots?
If you have proper UVs, i would sculpt such fine details in SP alone, not in zbrush like on this guy i did you can see you can come far with good UVs:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nyxPo