Normal map vs bump map on blender 2.61

In blender 2.61 there are two internal renderers. First one is blender rendering engine and the second is cycles rendering engine. In this post i want to compare the use of normal map between those two renderer, but after i search around i notice that cycles rendering engine don't have the ability to render normal map yet, so i decided to compare between normal map in blender engine vs bump/displacement map in cycles and see compare the result.

Scene preparation
For scene preparation i create these objects:
1. Standard box object, beveled two times
2. Suzanne monkey mesh object
3. Ground plane as a ground for those other two objects.

Making a hi-poly objects to be used as reference in low-poly normal map
For making hi-poly reference i duplicate both box and monkey object and use the subsurf modifier
1. Duplicate the beveled box object and add subsurf modifier, change the view subdivision to 4 and apply the modifier.
2. Duplicate the monkey objet and do the same.
3. Sculpt both objects so they have some details.
4. Move them to other layer.

Baking Normal Maps
After the scene is ready, i create normal map by baking the hi-poly objects into low-poly.

Creating two version of the scene

After that, i make two version of this scene. The first one was for rendering using blender rendering engine and the other one is for cycles rendering engine.

 

For rendering in blender rendering engine i just apply the normal texture map to the texture slot, while for rendering in cycles rendering engine i have to convert the normal map texture into a black and white picture. To convert the normal map to black and white picture i use RGB to BW converter in shader node.

Here's the result i get by using blender rendering engine:

1. Box object

2. Monkey object

And here's the result i get when i'm using cycles rendering engine:

1. Box object

2. Monkey object

The result of the scene rendered by blender rendering engine and cycles rendering engine are completely different but i see that the bump result from the cycles engine compared to blender rendering engine is not that different. The major difference between bump and normal map from what i can see is around edge with sharp angle, the normal map from blender rendering engine seem fix the sharp angle.

 

Another experiment that i done is to use subdiv modifier level 1 for both box object and monkey object and here's the result: