Hi there,
don't know if this is a newbie question or not therefore I posted here. Up to now I do not had any issues with normal maps. As I get more and more deeper involved into 3dcoat I try to do more and want to paint my own normal maps rather than using bitmap batterns or perlin noise.
Problem is that I have visible seams on map. Think about putting a hammer onto a large metal surface. You get a small hard spot and than a way long small disortions. Now you want to repair that destruction. It will get more smooth but it will not entirely perfect. Or think about a metal plane with is being hold by a hard frame where you can see small bumps all the way except where the structure holds the metal. Hope you have an idea what I am after.
Okay, the way I try to achive is doing a new layer with a standard material and paint just small dots on the normal layer. Afterwards I hold the shift key while painting and smoothen the normal structure, finer and finer. When the result is done I decrease the layer opacity for bump to about 20% - it must be very very thin.
The result now is that it seems to be too thin. Within the attached image I hope you can see that. There are just areas of one rgb value f.e. 81,81,81 and later on 82,82,82. As far as I understand this is the smallest value within a 256 greyscale, but a normal map is rgb. Why do I have no access to this? Within my exterior application it looks the same, just small amount of a normal change, not the effect I wanted. Can't this be done more precise?
Is my workflow the wrong? Is there another way to achive the result I want to have? Do I have to use displacement to be more precise?