Why does the normal map bake darken the render?

Question

I'm trying to convert the normal of a material to an image texture, simple thing! It's not even taking a more complex model and baking it to a low poly... But for some reason, every time I bake the normals seem to darken the model's surroundings!

This is the model I made just trying to make simple concrete:

But when I bake the normal map with these settings:

This is what comes out in the texture per object:

It looks right when I get close to the camera, but it looks like the normals are obscuring the model! I'm using object space, I've tried tangent space and it always seems to repeat itself, I've tried CPU and GPU computation and there's no difference... What's happening?

Update

There's no secret to what I'm doing, this was just a test for me to see if I could quickly generate a normal map in Blender for a new texture, so I created a new texture myself and painted it with a diffuse image of concrete material that I I found it on the internet...

Then I simply used the bump node together with a color gradient to simulate a normal map for the model like this:

Then I generated it from the normal that was for a texture image and then I connected the normal image that had been generated to the normal map and then... Why did it get dark?

Update 2

When I bake trying to use tangent space, things get completely bizarre!

Hello, Arthur, please show us the other end of the process too.. the shader node tree you are using to interpret the baked image as normals in the second render. If necessary, pack the baked normal image in a .bend, and share on https://blend-exchange.com/ — Robin Betts, Feb 09 '24 at 07:20
I see your Normal Map node is set to "Object Space", try setting it to "Tangent Space" and see if that produces better results. If it does, I'll add this as an answer. — gcs_dev, Feb 09 '24 at 13:49
Does this answer your question? Why rendering black areas in cycles? — Emir, Feb 09 '24 at 13:59
That's not what I'm talking about, I just wanted to find a way to create a normal map image that, when I put it in the model, is identical to when it was calculated by the nodes... — Arthur Sally, Feb 09 '24 at 14:02
Also, set the Color Space of the Image Texture node to Non-Color. — gcs_dev, Feb 09 '24 at 14:05

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 09 '24 at 14:20

Normal Map texture nodes should usually be set to either "Non-Color" or "Linear" color space. sRGB should never work for a correctly baked Normal map.

Also, the Normal Map node should be set to use "Tangent Space" for the type of Normal Map that you're baking here.

So, set your Normal Map image texture's color space to "Non-Color", and your Normal Map node to "Tangent Space" and you should be good to go.

Why does the normal map bake darken the render?

1 Answers1