Substance Workflow question

TravelingAnvil

I have a workflow question. I am working on a scene with a lot of low level assets. Mostly boxes, crates, mirrors, picture frames, etc. 

The assets are different enough that I cannot build them modularly. I have talked to several folks and they say where they work there is not enough time to make a high poly and retopoligize for most assets, excepting "hero" assets.

Typically I make a high poly in Maya / zbrush and bake in substance. I have had very little success putting my low poly into the high slot in substance, but not enough to make me happy with the results. 

What is the best workflow to get a solid curvature / normal bake if I do not have the time to make a high poly and re topologize? 

If the answer is to use low poly in high poly slot what needs to be done in addition to this to get a quality bake? 

Thanks! 

-tb

Chimp

You can put nothing in that box and still get your curvature, but if there's no normals there's no normals. One valid workflow for some is to never do HP and just paint / stamp them in Substance Painter. 

noosence

You could also use a trim sheet. You can look over this GDC presentation for Sunset Overdrive for an in depth explanation of how they used their trim sheets. You could also combine this with tiling textures, by using a second UV set, and get some nice material variety.

Dethling

Maybe you can also use a face weighted normals workflow, this would increase your vert count but you will not need baked normal maps: 
http://polycount.com/discussion/182209/face-weighted-vertex-normals-vid-tut-for-beginners

poopipe

make a really quick high poly to get your main bevels and do the detailed stuff within substance