How to brighten up normal maps/shadows ONLY?

Hi! I have stumbled upon two issues in connection to the brightness of shadows/normals in my level:

  1. I would like to only brighten up the shadows in the level a bit, without making the rest of the level/lighting brighter.

  2. I have a normal map, with increased insensitivity (by multiplying it with a V3) in order to achieve the desired level of roughness on rocks. However, that also results in some really dark spots, see image. Is there any way to brighten up the normal shadow color?

The scene has a directional light, skylight (cast shadows off), lightmass volume and all the standard stuff. Searching around the web, the most common answers are “add a skylight” or to increase environment color/insensitivity. Both option result in not only shadows being brighter, but also the whole level as you can see on the pic, which is undesirable. Neither seems to help addressing the dark spots on the normal maps, see the image. Any ideas what I can do? maybe there’s some material trick to the normal maps?

http://i.imgur.com/4VsTStZ.jpg

I have the same question: All the shadows cast by geometry in my scene are grey, but the shadows from the normal map on the materials are black. The highlights, by contrast, are what I expect to see: light hitting the material adds a little highlight. But anywhere where there’s shadows goes straight to black, creating a lot of weird contrast.

The material in this pic is in direct light: See how the highlights at the top of the bricks is nice and subtle, while the shadows at the bottom are black? How do I adjust that?

I think the two of you might actually be having different problems.

Araklaj, have you tried turning off ambient occlusion? It can be a post process effect and/or baked into the static lighting. See if that helps.

DaveEvodant, try placing a skylight in your scene, if you haven’t already. If you have already done that, try increasing its intensity.

I always get this result, even with skylight. The actual mesh shadows are lit properly by it, but the normal maps cause some pitch black parts spots.