High Poly baking on a mesh with 90 degree hard edges?

VickiVampiress

Hello! Newbie at 3D art here. I'm also new to these forums, so please forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong section.

Let me start off by summarizing my issue.
Basically, what I've been trying to do is bake down smooth edges from a high poly model, onto a low poly model without Face Weighted Normals.
The low poly mesh has plain, 90 degree, hard shaded edges.
I know it's possible, I just don't know how to actually do it properly. I've been looking around everywhere online, and while I'm getting some good information, most of it is... I don't want to say useless, but it doesn't help me. I'm also getting mixed signals.

To give you an example of what I mean, here's two cubes in Maya:


As you can see, one of the cubes has been beveled. The other has not.
With a high poly mesh, the one on the left bakes just fine in Substance Painter (evidently). However with the one on the right, I get this:


Now, I sort of know why this happens. Especially when you look at both the low poly and high poly in Maya. They don't match up at all, which makes sense. I've split the UVs of the low poly model as I knew was required, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tackle the mismatched texture detail that occurs when I bake. Do I need to do things differently or is the way I'm currently approaching this not something that's possible?

The reason I ask all this is because I've modeled a little bucket to get back into the groove of things after being out of it for so long:


Normally I'd bevel everything to make the model look delicious when baked. But, I want to conserve tris. Ideally what I'd want is to have the edges along the top faces of the boards beveled, but only on the front and back. Not the ones in the gaps. The rest of the model I'd want 90 degree hard edges.
How would I go about doing this? Obviously the thing I'm trying with the cube isn't working.
I know I can crease the high poly edges, but when I tried that earlier all it did for me was create artifacts and projection errors.

I'd really appreciate any input on this because I can't seem to find any existing information that's of use to me.
I should also mention I'm a bit of a dummy. When possible, please keep things a little simple. I know a lot for someone of my level of experience, according to my friend who's sort of a professional in this field. But I don't know nearly enough to my liking. Yet.

Finally, sorry for the amount of pictures included. I just hope they help.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide!

NoRank

In the box example, even thought it doesn't really follow very well the sillhouette you could get away with a better result. I guess you're doing it cageless, right? If you are, increase your max frontal distance and max rear distance (actually, I guess that the rear distance for this example would solve but play with the values and see what looks better for you).

VickiVampiress

I actually tried it again with a high poly that's matches the low poly a little better and it came out a lot better. And yes, I'm doing this cageless. Increasing the frontal and/or rear distance doesn't really seem to help much. What I have right now though is much better already, there's just a minor seam at a certain light and viewing angle. It's better than before though for sure.

NoRank

Well, I actually just did a test with quite the same cube you had and increased the rear distance to 0.1 and it got just the same result you have in this last one. Still, it's better to have a shape that follows the silhouette now, triangles are not that really expensive (even thought you should never go full retard lol).

VickiVampiress

Beveling always looks better, but now that I know how to use this technique it could come in really handy. I think it's a good way to make things look pretty if you're trying to conserve tris for whatever reason when you're not able to trim down the low poly any further without making it look ugly. I've just always stuck with the idea of less is better. My bucket is already at around 1124 Tris, surprisingly. I can't help but feel that's a lot for a minor prop, hence why I want to avoid face weighted normals through bevels.

NoRank

Yeah I know how you feel about this haha. Still sometimes it's easier to rely on topology than waste a good amount of resolution to give it a nice smooth edge. And well, when you're using FWVN you're not really increasing your vertex count, still you're producing thin long triangles which can be a problem.

TheCloudCreator

Got exactly this problem with my model I think. Going to try your solution.