When are unnecessary faces removed in baking normals for complex objects?

tmeucci

Here's a visual aid for explaining what I'm trying to understand.

I've got a trench coat which has been sculpted solid because I would like a thickness to the bottom and such.

Naturally some faces will be unnecessary and need to be deleted at some point, like in the back where the body of course covers it and inside the sleeves. (Shown deleted in the picture)

Is it a bad idea to delete those now? I'm going to be baking in Substance. How exactly does the UVing process work here?

kanga

You can do that at the retopo stage. There is no reason to delete polys, just dont put them there in the first place.

quockhanhlk

Unnecessary faces mean wasted uv/ texture space. As @kanga said, you dont have to worry about deleting faces if they're not there in the first place. Just dont cover the part of the model that wont be seen when you're retopo-ing.