Why does my blender use normal map to render strange shadows in cycles, but everything is normal in eevee? And it is normal in marmoset tool or maya, which means that it is not a normal map or a problem with the model.
That looks like Shadow Terminator artifacts… (happens when there’s not enough geometry to correctly trace rays over the surface)
There are ways to solve it, thought your best option is to add a loop or two near the corners.
You could also check your settings as mentioned in the link above.
Or check if there is a setting in that section and if so, try removing it.
But in eevee renderer, maya arnold, marmoset toolbag, the same normal texture of the same model is completely normal.
Is not a problem with the normal texture. Is about the lights and the way light gets calculated inside Cycles. (you should be able to see some changes, just by moving your light around)
Every render engine has its own way to do that, and Cycles way is more suited for meshes with more geometry.
Why? Even arnold is normal. Isn’t cycles very similar to arnold? Besides, I think it is normal for others to use cycles to render the assets of bridge.
From the ‘outside’… They are both path-tracers.
But the similarity is just in terms of input > output, and not how internally the renderer works.
Now… I cannot tell you exactly how Arnold solves the Shadow Terminator problem, because it’s not open source. But the problem is not exclusive to Cycles, and other path-tracing renderers suffer from the same.
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However, I have seen some people use the assets of bridge to import bledner, and these strange artifacts will not appear when using cycles. These artifacts are more like that the basic mesh uses the normal of all soft edges, and the renderer limits the extent to which the normal texture changes the normal of the mesh to a certain extent. When it exceeds a certain angle, the normal texture is not used and the normal information of the mesh itself is directly used for rendering.
To see what’s really happening, you need to share your file with us. (you can delete the table legs, has we don’t need them, but be sure to pack the normal texture)
Sometimes the object itself has objects imported from outside with shading problems, but the exact cause is unknown.
I don’t remember exactly how I solved it
I think I created a new object and combined it with a new one. The problem has been solved.
I don’t know if the object in this problem can be done in the same way 
Right after import the dialogue was on in my import…
Clearing that and just adding an area lighting…No Normal was added you can see what you showed, 80% of that I would say, is the mesh and the triangulation… I cleared custom split normals, but it didn’t effect it as far as I could see…
Connecting the Normal with Non-color data selected I get this…
So I would say the way you added light has accentuated the dents and dings that were scanned in the downloaded model…
Adding the roughness and albedo, and there are no visable problems.
NOTE: I downloaded the Lod 0 model, with 2K textures from Quixel ( 8K is an insane amount unless it is just for a render…)
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You need to render in cycles, which is normal in eevee, as my title says.
It is in Cycles… with 128 samples ( I only use 128 samples as it works just fine in all situations except sometimes with glass and transparent objects with specular highlights, then I use 256 )
Cycles
EeVee
Did you modify the model or the texture in any way? The normal map is built to fit the model exactly, so the slightest change to either of them would make the normal map no longer fit the model.
So, the problem disappears if the model and texture are downloaded from the original source.
I tried it with the files provided in this thread and I am getting the problem.
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The problem is there and it’s a shadow terminator problem.
The Area Light that @RSEhlers added, hides the artifacts (or better, those faces get light from a bigger range)
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