Question about my low poly creation

Billabong

I've created a Benelli shotgun and on the top it has these extrusions that come out down the sights. I'm a little confused if I should leave each of these extrusions out for the low poly or create a flat plane to go across it and let the normal and AO map do the work of it. This would be for a first person shooter.

Thanks for any help.

-Brandon

sushi

I'm not much of a weapon modeler, but if this is going to be a first person viewed, next-gen asset I would definitely model in that extra detail. I'd probably limit the geometry to approx. 30 tris for each of those extrusions though.

Then bake the beveled edge detail into the normal map... + the AO.

Billabong

Thanks for replying Sushi,
My main concern was when unwrapping this, those extrusions aren't going to take up much pixel space and I was curious if the information in the texture would even be able to be seen.

sushi

If you're concerned about the texture information not being seen, it would depend on the size of texture you're using. If you're using say, a 2K map, I doubt it would be an issue and frankly, if time is not a major constraint I'd do the bake even if it was a 512x512 texture.

Using a flat plane for that section wouldn't look nearly as good without having the nice silhouettes you get from having mesh extrusions. This is assuming the weapon you're modeling is targeting a next-gen platform.

Billabong

fair enough, thanks for the help Sushi

-Brandon