How to save normal map texture from Blender? Normal map's neutral color has to correspond to #8080FF HEX value. In this case the resulting normal will be exactly the same as the normal of its underlying face. When I made a normal map texture in Blender and imported it into a game engine, I found that at seams I often get strong artifacts, because all my normals got skewed by the texture color offset (my neutral color was BCBCFF)

I am trying to save a normal map from Blender (OS is Ubuntu 15.10) so its neutral color corresponds to 8080FF. Here is what I am doing so far:


Generate a texture -- Color space 'Raw', 32bit float.
Bake normal map in Cycles or Blender Internal
To check that I have #8080FF as neutral -- in the paint mode I select 8080FF color, paint over neutral color region, and I can see the neutral color is identical to #8080FF
Save image as 16 bit PNG or OpenEXR
When I check the neutral color in Gimp it shows BCBCFF value


What am I missing?
Apparently what I was missing (Windows or Linux) is to check Save as Render box for PNG/OpenEXR. So the following worked for me to generate an external normal map texture:


Generate an image in Raw Color Space and with Float Buffer:




Note that Float Buffer is important, as 8bit dynamic range is not enough for a quality Normal Map. The Raw Color Space maps 8080FF as neutral color in Blender


Bake a normal map in Cycles or Blender Internal
Save resulting map as 16bit PNG with Save as Render checked.