Normal skewing baking issue

Danface

Hey all, 

I know this is a very common problem and solutions have been posted everywhere and anywhere but I'm finding it hard to find a solution that I can actually apply myself. I'm using Maya and baking in Substance Painter. 

I've looked through the "Skew you buddy" page but it's very hard to follow without the pictures displaying. 

In my image, as you can imagine, the screws on the sides are skewing into the center. Is a cage needed for this? I checked my vertex normals and they are pointing straight and adding geometry just lessens the normals, making them flatter and less visible.

Obscura

Put a vertex above every skrew on the lowpoly. This will make the normals pointing  perpendicular to the skrews, so they will bake straight.

Danface

@Obscura This is working, thank you, but at the cost of an increased polycount. Is there any way to do this without increase the polycount? If I had 50 screws, I'd have to add enough intersections to have a vertex point for each screw.

Obscura

There isn't. To be honest, your base topology makes it much higher poly than the skrew baker vertices. You have a bunch or edges going across he surface and each other, and they are just unnecessary. Most of them could be welded into corners.Try something like this:

Danface

Thank you I'll give this a shot