Create custom cage and move its vertices which above your particular detail into position, where their vector from original vertex to cage vertex will match the desired view angle. That should work. As @gnoop said, cage vertex position matters as they define vector of raycast.
I am not sure about Maya but usually cage normals are irrelevant . It's cage vertex position in relation to low poly vertex counterpart that defines rays vector i.e direction of projection . At least it was always that way before, not by cage normals.Sort of a reason why cages had to have same vertex order as the low poly…
Look under the Mesh Display menu in Maya. You can set normals by vector (set vertex normal), and/or rotate them individually (vertex normal edit tool). If you want to adjust an entire edgeloop, its much easier to add temporary edge loops to constrain them, then lock normals and delete the temp.
Why has this not done anything? You can see despite the low poly normals direction it is still showing me the details as viewed from above for the most part. Is there something I misunderstand or should this not work? I also wonder if the vertex normals control how the rays shoot inwards. Am also correct in saying the…