Zbrush to Blender Cycles Normal Map Workflow

I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing wrong. I can’t get normal maps to show right in blender cycles. I sculpted a frowning girl in zbrush and I can’t get the frown to show up right in my cycles render with normal maps. Either it’s not showing or there are artefacts.

Here is my first node setup and the result:


Here is my second node setup and the result:


Original zbrush sculpt:


I use the the BraydonRandt’s tutorial on extracting normal maps as well as this tutorial by Jesus/Artejaol.

Am I extracting the normal maps wrong? Or am I applying it in blender wrong? What am I missing? Any help would be great, thanks.

Hi,

The node setup looks correct, I suggest you using the “node setup one”, because normal maps are supposed to work as inputs for shaders. Since the node setup is - at least in my opinion - working, I think you have a issue with either the UV map or the normal map. But unfortunately I am not a Zbush user and can not give any advice on how to export correctly…

What does the normal map look like ?

Can you supply demo files of the hair object and tool

Thanks guys for the replies. I found my workaround: bake normal maps in blender instead of using zbrush to export it. I’m getting much better results doing it that way.