What to do with this lamellar armor (retopology and bake)

Kelgar

I've done this armor as part of a personal project and even though it's not gonna end up anywhere other than my portfolio, I wanted to show some retopology skills as well.

This is how I decided to retopologize it

The problem is that with all those hard angles I would have to make a lot of hard edges and seams and it doesn't seem like the best solution, especially if I want to show it as part of the work.
I tried baking it with all soft edges and the normal artifacts are noticeable up close, but maybe after texturing nobody will notice it?

The other option I thought about would be to bevel at least all the frontal faces, so I don't have to split all the UVs. Like this


All options don't seem too great to be honest. Maybe I should cut only the upper part of the plates cause this is where the artifacts are the most noticeable and make the UVs in a series of strips?

How would you go about it?

dimwalker

Maybe this can be enough?

poopipe

do you need that geometry at all?

Kelgar

Ok, got it. I guess I can put much less geometry than I thought I had to

poopipe

maybe

if you have normal maps then you only need geometry for silhouette, UVs and deformation. 
pick a view distance and decide what's needed based on that

gnoop

If for some reason you still want  such detailed  geometry  for close LOD   project/ transfer/ borrow  vertex normals   from  next LOD  without that  extra geometry.   You will see no shading  gradients  if you don't have  them on that "next" lod .   

Use attribute  transfer in Maya, data transfer modifier in Blender  or 3d party  scripts for 3d max.

ps.  Also you see this shading gradients  because it's  some ancient outdated  preview shader in your screen . From 3d max my guess .    Before Morten Mikkelsens  tangent space became default everywhere.   Check it in Blender  with Evee   or   Unreal     or whatever modern  game engine.   Perhaps you hardly notice those gradients at all or so subtle they could be ignored .