High poly to Low Poly baking & Bevels on objects
Hi there,
I am curious to see what people think on here. I am a student at University trying to become an environment artist and I am curious as to when its appropriate to use bevels and when to not. Also, when would you high poly to low poly bake or when to low poly bake only? I am currently working on a Resident Evil-inspired village piece. I am currently making modular buildings along with hero assets and decorative pieces. I am getting very strange answers from the lecturers. I have had one lecturer say always use bevels and low poly to high poly bake. However, I have recently been playing Half-Life Alyx and some of the environment objects don't have bevels, and their texturing looks amazing. I am currently working on some gravestones for my scene and I am wondering whether to damage them with high poly and bake them or make the damage in Substance with normal maps and alphas. I am very confused about how to approach all this. Is there a rule of thumb or a way of thinking when approaching environments this way? Just wondering if anyone has a workflow they follow? Thank you :)
Replies
If you're looking for a rule of thumb, I'd say use a bevel when it's actually going to be noticable in the model's silhouette, or it will make some other part of the process easier or more efficent. Using hard edges instead of tiny bevels is fine most of the time, with the added bonus of being easier to LOD.
Save baking for unique props and hero pieces. Tilable textures with various blends and shader-driven effects such as edge wear for the rest.