Peculiar normal map issue

[S. Houtzager]

Take a look at this image and see what happened. The bump factor with normal maps does not do anything. Does this work?

http://www.intuitionusa.com/1/normalmaps.jpg

S. Houtzager

[RichardJoly]

It is supposed to work...

Could it be a maximum bump scale could be inherent to the map? Can we boost the bump over the original scale? I never tested that.

Have you tried .1 to see if the bumps scale down?

Could you post the normal map?

[S. Houtzager]

Yup, there is a limit of 1 for any effect. Used a .1 and pattern moved down. Thanks.

SH

[BJMonkey]

It's because of the way Normal maps work.

They work using angles, which means they're hard coded to one 'elevation' whereas bumps use height which is relative and easily scalable.

The reason they can be less is because you can fake that using blending with what it looks like with no map. But it does still look wrong. Faking higher is even more difficult, I believe. :)