Adding more details, changing the grip geometry so I can sculpt it and smooth it well on Zbrush and finally modifying the Topology to prevent many edges going to the same vertex... Please, I'd like to know your opinion so I can learn from my mistakes!
how about creating a copy of the object, flatten the stack of that and using one of those vertex normal thief scripts to transfer the 'good' normals over? there was a really speedy script for that popular here on the forums. it's been a while with max for me but this might have been called 'noors normal thief'.
thx Lotet, I would like give more water dynamic but I have already max tris on my pedestral so for water. I tried to give more waves but no success, the topology deformation is so sad when I up vertex... I will look to retake that.
Thanks a lot @POPOL I'm really happy this script is helping you guys I have updated the script and the first post, its now a lot more stable, a lot faster, now you can connect more than 2 edges and the connect tool for vertexes is faster :)
If going the pure polygonal route(no high-poly bake) then you might want to add some chamfering/beveling on sharp corners, or use vertex shading. You can add a normal map channel in SP and derive your detail from there: wood grain, damage, moss, etc.
I think they only show up when the base level has a sharp enough angle between two polypons. If it's too low (under 60degrees maybe?) then it wont show up. Pull a vertex high enough with the move brush so that the angle becomes sharper and they will begin to appear.
Some quick updates, work has hopefully cooled off a bit, just got to switch off the lazy brain mode. Got some base colours down in UE with super simple vertex blending. Next, substance materials for rock and sand to start that whole thing off!
Your edges are fairly sharp. You're going to want to read this to see WHY sharp hard edges are bad for your normal bakes. http://polycount.com/discussion/107196/youre-making-me-hard-making-sense-of-hard-edges-uvs-normal-maps-and-vertex-counts/p1
Disabling the "Normalize map" option should work fine then. Packing it should scale it down back into the [0,1] range automatically as well. I figured the mention of having a unified checker boxes and correlating the vertex distances onto the UVs as well was just asking for a truly "unfolded" version of their geometry.
Depending on the render engine, there should be an auto LOD system that uses tessellation to work, so the animation would work normally. i think all big engines have a auto LOD system, or you can manually set the LOD meshes and the engine will do the vertex weighting automatically.