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Normal baking object with thin straps

Modelling software: Blender
Rendering software: Unreal
Use case: Real-time render modelling portfolio

I'm trying to figure out the best way to get good normals on a backpack object, with its various thin looping straps. My high poly modelling uses straps with thickness, and I presumed that they ought to be made into planes for the low poly. The conundrum I have is that these straps loop and close on themselves, and I'm not really sure how to resolve that on the low poly - since, either the parts of the strap which are meant to be held together will float apart from each other, or I predict the baked normals for the straps will be rather badly messed up.

I also considered having the straps as a separate mesh to the backpack, such that the planes would float just over the backpack's surface, there'd be no need to bake normals to the straps, and the straps object would not cast shadows, so as to make it look fairly innocuous... but this would of course make the lighting on the backpack somewhat less correct.

I'm sure there must be some conventional wisdom on this kind of thing. Should I use thick straps on the low poly instead of planes? Should I manually paint over the normal map output? Or something else?


Replies

  • kosh3d
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    kosh3d keyframe
    Those kind of straps I would always do with thickness, doesn't make much sense having them just as planes. Thick lowpoly for the straps will increase the polycount only marginally but give you a clean bake and a lot more realistic looking piece.
  • Fabi_G
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    Fabi_G veteran polycounter
    Hi! You could bake some straightened straps down, basically adding some reusable strap parts to the texture atlas, you can then map the lowpoly UVs to. Certainly an option to save texture space if you have many straps. If you array and deform your straps along curves, makes it easy to swap out the base mesh.
  • dimwalker
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    dimwalker polycounter lvl 16
    Depending on how low-poly end result should be and if you want to animate those straps independently, you can bake straps into backpack and only model raindrop shaped end-parts separately.
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