Well I didn't get as much time as I wanted on this but I worked as hard as I could And I'm pretty proud of the results. I ended up at 8k tris witch I thought was pretty good.
But First, my thoughts on Handplane as a baker. I didn't have any problem with what it produced. I had some pretty rough UV's so I was expecting a whole heap of errors on my first bake but it came out fantastic. It was also very quick. Even when I did my final bakes the only thing that took over 20 secs was the AO, which was pretty slow at 8X SS. But it was on par with Xnormal. I did Have an issue with my cages never getting a green light. They were the exact same mesh with a push modifier so I thought they would be right. I ended up ditching my cages as they kept on showing up errors. Once they were gone I had no problems. I really enjoyed using the material presets and different projection groups. That feature alone will keep me coming back.
The only real problems I had was with the UI. I have a small list of things I hope will help you out, some might just be personnel things but I thought I would put them in anyways.
* When I right clicked in the save directory to make a new folder, the whole program crashed.
* I found myself changing all my material presets when I scrolled down with the scroll wheel on my mouse.
* I was thinking maybe the Material presets could be on the same tab as the projection groups?
* Some sought of preview of the bakes would be nice.
* This wasn't a problem I had but I think people like to create ID maps from the vertex level. So I'm not sure how that could be used in this workflow.
![](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/4s/vwb1mtfq8vb2.jpg)
![](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/70/tj1vx00ve3su.jpg)
![](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/au/vgaalwlzykkz.jpg)
![](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/y1/l6bb7zcho3al.jpg)
![Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/as/av4wwnfo43iz.jpg](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/as/av4wwnfo43iz.jpg)
![Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/q1/hbd0xs0gbhh1.jpg](https://us.v-cdn.net/5021068/uploads/editor/q1/hbd0xs0gbhh1.jpg)
Replies
After that it was time to Build up the basic forms and at some of the detail. I have to finish off a few things like the handle, but I use this pass to make sure all the proportions are pretty accurate. Then it's time to clean up the topology and start the real high poly details
That being said, I think you can achieve a nice silhouette with about 20k tri's. Most current weapons are in the 40-60k tri range.