Unwrapping a Hard Edged object
I'm very new to modelling and have started a project to build some assets for a game. My first set are some gravestones for a cemetery. I'm aiming to keep the models pretty low poly as they are not main components and will not be visited up close. I've created a low poly cross model and a high poly one with chamfered and smoothed edges which I intend to bake a normal map from for the low poly.
Initially I had some problems with seams on the edges and weird shading. After much messing around I was able to get a reasonable bake after reading some posts on here which suggested splitting the UVs along all hard edges. Before that I tried a single smoothing group on the low poly model which was better but still looked odd.
So I've got a nice normal map baked, however now I'm coming to make the diffuse I'm struggling a bit since nearly all of my faces are broken apart on the UV map to bake the hard edges properly. Is this issue normal? In past tests I stitched edges where possible on cube like shapes so I could texture around the object easily but with them broken apart they do not lay next to each other and therefore continuing a mouldy marble texture around the shape is not too easy.
What I'm really after is finding out how experience modellers would manage this issue?
Initially I had some problems with seams on the edges and weird shading. After much messing around I was able to get a reasonable bake after reading some posts on here which suggested splitting the UVs along all hard edges. Before that I tried a single smoothing group on the low poly model which was better but still looked odd.
So I've got a nice normal map baked, however now I'm coming to make the diffuse I'm struggling a bit since nearly all of my faces are broken apart on the UV map to bake the hard edges properly. Is this issue normal? In past tests I stitched edges where possible on cube like shapes so I could texture around the object easily but with them broken apart they do not lay next to each other and therefore continuing a mouldy marble texture around the shape is not too easy.
What I'm really after is finding out how experience modellers would manage this issue?