Why not just put those small bumps as instances in a center of polygons or vertexes or use geometry nodes. And then use data transfer to transfer UV and normals from a carrier surface to those bumps . That way you could make them random or wear them down in certain places
Search for game pipelines on polycount wiki! There are a lot of info and new terms you have to learn, like baking maps from high to low poly, how smoothing groups and vertex normals afferct your normal map baking, and pbr texturing. Enjoy the frustration and problem solving :)
You could build in in your shader multiple cubemaps, and then use world space mask or vertex colors painted directly in editor to blend between areas. Additionally you always could save multiple cubemaps/masks as R+G+B+A texture, and then tint them inside shader.
Jonathan Flectcher does a pretty dam nice tutorial of hand painted textures in the "Vertex" mag. http://www.artbypapercut.com/ starts on page 47 and is fucking great. also i have seen the content but i do believe 3d motive had a tut for hand painted weapon textures.
the vertcount will always be different between what the maya viewport tells you and what udk says. since for uv spilts and hardedged smoothing to work in udk, it actully needs ti duplicate verts so they can have 2 vertex normals, or have 2 uv's associated with them.
There's a bunch of pros to this method, if it works right: it's not destructive, so you can always redo stitches if you want. Baked geometry always looks better than generated normals. You can give stitches separate vertex color to use as masks in photoshop to change colors or texture.
Nice stuff. You could save some triangles removing backfaces on your woodbeams. Also the uniquely unwrapped plaster texture could have been made with a tiling one and AO painted on vertex. But I understand your way of doing here since it's the only building of the scene.
You could always try exporting the polypaint out as vertex color information for use in baking on your low poly. Beyond that, it sounds like you might be hosed :/ Dynamesh is nice if you keep it low-res and use it at the beginning of your sculpt, but it has a tendency to ruin sculpts.
Vertex snap the last vert to the first vert and then use the straighten loop tool (Graphite) to bring the others in line. Straighen loop is pretty well hidden. you need to go to the ribbon in edge mode. Go to Loops Loop Tools A floater will appear with the loop tools. they rock :D
Thanks ^^, you're welcome! Tiny update: xNormalBatcherSetup.exe New: - Can reset settings independantly for each panel Fix: - Disable Bake Me button if object is missing components - Bug with direction map setting - Baking AO & Vertex Color (now creates a secondary xml file for Vcolors)