Ok, it looks bad because it is set to color and is treated as a 8bit image. You should set your fxnmap to be greyscale and set it to absolute 16 bits in its global parameters. Also to transform it into a normal map, you can simply use the Normal filter in the space bar menu instead of that complicated setup.
Crosspost Update on my cushion wall. I upped the amount of tiles on the material as well as added more of a pinch to the gap on the normal map. The major overhaul was treating the fade with more of a rubbed out look. I wanted it to have the feel of someone leaning on it everyday with some slight cracking, similar to an old…
Ok I wasnt going to try to use SD like that but as you guys say it is quite capable I will give that workflow a try. Im just concerned that it wont be as fast as just doing it in photoshop, perhaps that doesnt matter if you know you are going to re-use the graphs and save time. I guess I will just treat it as a learning…
I decided to give Substance Designer another try. My results: I really started diggin it. When I started to treat the program like math program with images, it all become much more clear now. It's not best result, but it's better than anything I have made in SD before :D. I think I start using it more. As once material is…
I don't do any 2D-fixing up on the bakes either. Honestly it comes out fine; I don't think I ever managed to get my cage bakes 100% error-free either (if you look at some of my older work, like the Dozer you can probably see small things here and there), and doing things cageless takes a lot less time for the same result.…