Delete mapped to X??? No way, I hit X by accident enough and turn off my gizmos. So I should at least unmap X so my gizmos don't turn off. But I don't need it to be easy to delete thing :P I've been using XNormal on floating polys with no weird issues, of course I usually give the floating polys different UV space.
Well. I tried. And failed :p I would say have more and evenly spaced geo, But yours looks pretty good flat. So if i were going to do it (in maya especialy) i would do A. Floats B. NURBS. I'd stear a lot lot harder towards floats though, you can poly model them, and they will bake well. And be quicker/easier.
How would I go about adding these shapes? Modelling it flat then bending it into a cylinder? Or floating Geo? I can't seem to add them, especially the top one which is on the curve. It's basically an indent so a bolt can bolt the top on. Which I will also have on the lowpoly, so I want the smooth edges to be baked,…
@Evil_Fischi I'd suggest just going with floating geo because there seems to be other inset details on that circular shape you'll have to bake down as well.
Also is there any reason you have to connect the cylinder to the gun? If it is left as floating Geo then you save hassle / vertices by not having to cut it up and join it.
On a side note as it was mentioned earlier, I know lots of games have used the floating detail trick to get some quicker normal map details, but is this really still used? Seems to me that baking an ambient occlusion pass of your model has become systematic, and I don't see how that is cleanly possible with floating bits…
Floating is a good solution most of the time, but I thought this thread was for learning how to actually model more complex shapes, not tricks to get the normalmap looking correct.