The smoothing of your low poly will look bad without a normal map applied. Just make sure you have smoothing group splits at UV seams. There's a script in Textools to do that automatically. http://www.renderhjs.net/textools/ http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107196
Hey dude, it's been a while but I found this, maybe this can help you fixing the problem? :) [ame=" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLT61R8eTA&list=UU48M6o6CniSI1W4XIsjIPmw&index=60"]Creating a custom vehicle and script in Cryengine 3 SDK Part 1 - YouTube[/ame]
If the textures have standard naming conventions (like Gun_Normal and handgun_Albedo) you could easily create a script that will execute certain actions based on the texture you are currently processing,but yeah Substance Designer's approach is really the best way to batch tweak a large amount of textures.
With art it's hard surface modeling sense it brings out the perfectionist in me, which results in otherwise simple stuff taking forever to make. With scripting anything math heavy is difficult (regret not paying more attention back in school), though otherwise I really enjoy it :)
@chrilley Unity 2d is fine, missing some features but perfectly fine for 2d pixelart games (I've made a few!) the one thing it does lack is out of the box no-scripting. You need to program your own ... well basically everything. Which can be daunting.
I don't know if that can work with your existing objects, since I haven't tried it myself, but maybe for future projects this tool could come in handy ? http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/stone-placement-tools Sry, if you already know about it :)
Earlier versions of Unity had a fog script which could be adjusted to work like ground fog, so it was based on Y world position of the pixel. You might find similar things on the asset store or take a look at Unity 4 or 5 ImageEffect Bundles.
Unreal has blueprints for scripting anything without a single line of code. its node based, the learning curve is great in my opinion. I can't code either, except for a little hlsl, but I made many game prototypes and tools using blueprints in Unreal.
Nobody is flaming - just offering advice based on real life experience. If you only wanted advice on scripts you should have just asked that BUT I'm pretty sure the Unity forums would be a better place to ask that sort of info, this is primarily an art forum.