I have been using a completely up to date blender 2.8 (self build) for a couple of weeks now, but one thing that has seem to be broken for a while now is the normal maps in cycles. As you can see in the image provided there are 3 renders, 1 in eevee and 2 in cycles of which one has a normal map with a strength of 1 and the other one has a strength of 0. they both don’t seem to be rendering correctly. I am wondering if I am just doing something wrong because I have seen nobody else talk about this.
You plugged Normal map node directly to Displacement output.
In 2.79b, Displacement was an experimental feature. By default, in material settings, it was set to be a bump only effect like what you see in your EEVEE render.
But, for 2.80, Displacement becomes a stable feature.
https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/Cycles#Subdivision_and_Displacement
That means that by default what you plugged in it is no more influencing normals.
It is is now, producing a displacement.
Default for Displacement Method is no more Bump but Displacement Only under Settings panel of Material tab.
If you want to plug a Normal node somewhere, you’d rather plug it into Normal socket of Principled Shader node.
So, to sum it up : in 2.80, Normal map node goes into a Normal Socket.
And what goes into Displacement socket is a Displacement node.
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