0

I have a texture that is supposed to be a normals map:

enter image description here

It's not formatted like most other normals maps I've seen; it's pink instead of blue, and it has an alpha channel. So far, all the files designated as normals from the source of this file are the same way. When applied to my model in Blender, it looks wrong. How can I get Blender to recognize this as a normals texture?

Jack Harris
  • 369
  • 1
  • 5
  • 15
  • Give a link to the image with the alpha channel. But I don't think it could be a normal map. If not for a some kind of malformed BGR. – unwave Dec 15 '23 at 16:12
  • This red normal map looks like a compressed, Unity-optimized normal map. You need a few Math and other nodes to unpack it. Have a look here: https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/250102/107598 (possible duplicate question) – Blunder Dec 15 '23 at 17:17
  • That looks like it's the answer, but how do I run that script? – Jack Harris Dec 15 '23 at 17:43
  • Normal maps can be lossy stored in 2 channels recreating Z channel from X and Y on the fly. And in this case the second channel is in the Alpha channel. – unwave Dec 15 '23 at 18:51
  • I don't think they are supposed to be exported like that. Unreal Engine also has it. – unwave Dec 15 '23 at 18:53
  • Like why this image has duplicate channels? To make sense R and B channels should be empty. Like here https://imgur.com/xy9Tasq. – unwave Dec 15 '23 at 19:05
  • @JackHarris in Blender, you cannot and don't need to run the UnpackNormal() script. I've just added it for reference/documentation. It's Unity stuff. In Blender, you only need the node group and the nodes for the Normal input. Create them in the Shader Editor as shown in the anwer of the linked question. I'm not familiar with Unity but it seems that it handles the image automatically. The last post of the Unity forum reads: "Yep, that's all handled automatically with the target platform and UnpackNormal(). Just specify that it's a normal map and Unity will handle the rest." – Blunder Dec 16 '23 at 16:43

0 Answers0