Don’t use gamma on normal maps
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I shared this on LinkedIn, might help some people here too.
Don’t use Gamma on normal maps.
Normal maps should be saved in linear color space, without color correction from Gamma or sRGB.
A lot of game PBR texture pipelines use sRGB color space, which is fundamentally very similar to Gamma 2.2. It’s so close, they’re pretty much interchangeable, from an artist’s standpoint.
It’s important to use sRGB on 24bit bitmaps for colored inputs like Diffuse, Emissive, Reflection and Refraction.
Color textures that could be captured with a camera should be stored using sRGB color space, while all the other maps (normal, rough, metal, occlusion) should be saved in linear color space.
Gamma 1.0 = Linear, same thing.
You can use a histogram to check if a map has been saved wrong. Histograms are cool! Look for a peak in the center, that’s what you want to see.
