What's wrong with xNormal, I have the most simple scene with 1 high poly cylinder and 1 low poly. The high poly has just one inset ring and one extruded ring. xNormals normal maps generated looks like in the image linked below. Any ideas what's wrong? http://done.pp.fi/xnormal.jpg
Is there a way to disable that god awful bubble dialogue for poly operations for example? A way to make it go back to the old chamfer/extrude/inset boxes? I cannot stand this bubbly crap which does not update correctly and costs me an extra 4 clicks just to see changes I made every time I use the tools.
Figured I'd give this a thread instead of P&P, so I can get some proper critiques as I go. This is my first full hipoly to lowpoly bake, so I'm learning a lot along the way and am definitely making mistakes as I progress. Please feel free to critique away. Props to Izmojuki for the great concept artwork this is based on.…
I like the texture work and runes inset a lot, the bottom of the bears jaw doesnt read to me at all. I had to look at the concept to find out that this was the bottom jaw actually. perhaps try to have the jaw one piece with the bears head if possible, then accent that with armored hood and jaw piece.
Right now it looks like you have a lot of edges that run across the front bumper that aren't doing anything for the shape, except maybe keeping it from smoothing nicely. Maybe try to re-work the way the geometry is flowing around the curved insets. Try to keep the detail localized if possible.
I agree with Benton. You need a lot more in there. I'm trying to think of alleyways in downtown Vancouver and usually there's a but of warping in the ground. Also, consider putting in a few back doors. That way you can have insets into the building that will make them more interesting. Could also use some pipes
Most of your polygons seem to be in the two inset areas, and it really looks like most, if not all, of that detail could have been handled in the textures. 750 triangles seems very pricey for a generic wall section - indeed, the difference between the high poly and the low poly model appears to be ~50 polygons!
Nice work on the dagger. Recognized it immediately. I think the inset curve on the blade edge could use another division. You've only given it 4 segments when it could do with one or two more. You've spent a goodly amount of polys elsewhere, should go all out with this one.
Right now even if you were to inset those polygons before extruding inward using the method I pointed to by EarthQuake, you would probably still need to start off with a few extra edges to maintain the overall roundness of your large cylinder shape just like in EarthQuakes' example.
There's a lot of cylindrical shapes that have too many sides and a lot of small detail (tiny insets on some of the cylindrical pieces) that the normal map should do for you. Those edges can be allocated elsewhere if you need them. Looks pretty decent otherwise, just clean up that mesh a bit.