That test is not supposed to tell which is best or worst, so make your own appreciation keep in mind only the final result is the most important thing that you should never forget.
The main purpose of the standardization for normal maps you want to use into any Game engine and real time technology, is to make sure the normal map will fits with the DirectX Compression (DXT5 /BC5).
Level, Lighting, and Rendering setup
- Engine Scalability Settings : Epic
- Build lighting : preview mode
- One Sky light ( Distant light)
- Three Static Point Lights ( Red and blue at ground level, green is head height from the ground)
- One global sphere reflection cubemap for the complete level ( as recommended by Epic )
- One sphere reflections on front of both models
- SSR + SSAO enable
- Planar Reflection for the ground
- Rendered with Geforce 760 GTX /shader model 5
Material setup (gold /silver) :
Important Note : The Screen space reflections generate false lighting on border of the screen for both rendering tests ( SP & ZGametools).
Look ‘n Feel
Here is the normal map baked With Substance Painter 2.4.1 rendered into Unreal Engine 4.14.
On the normal map baked with ZGametools in Zbrush and rendered into Unreal Engine 4.14.
Observations on the surface reflections
Any Banding Issue ?
The Blue Channel after the Re-Normalisation of the Normal map
Conclusion
Make your own conclusion, share your observations and opinions by posting a comment.