Hello! Two questions (sorry if they’re too stupid and basic):
I’m learning to model for gamedev and I’m in a middle of my small project. Right now I’m baking objects in my scene and Im wondering if all of them are supposed to be baked. Objects such as walls don’t have any high poly details EXCEPT for simple bevels on their corners. Feels like baking would take too much time for just adding a bevel. So, in gamedev, is it done by baking or just shading?
For example, here’s a wall from TLOU2, I don’t think it was baked just for one bevel:
Question #2: if it is shading, then what is the appropriate way to do it?
Making a bevel when the object has smooth shading gives a bad result with broken normals, and I couldn’t find any info about fixing it. (auto smooth shading gives me sharp edges, that’s not what I need either)
The question is:
is that an appropriate way to make bevels if i’m making game assets? What is a standart? Feels like I’m missing something. And is there a faster way to make fine shading without manually selecting faces and setting normals?
Sorry again for stupid questions and mistakes, not my native language
Its done by shading, of course.
There is some tricks in TLOU (some other games also used this approach) but im not sure what such techniques was ever used specifically for big shapes like walls.
For most (but not all) cases you can simply use a Weighted Normal modifier which will produce similar result (mostly).
Also, theres a well known and widely used techniques for both, beveled (i.e. created with real geometry bevels) and non-beveled corners with a strip with “corners damage”:
This is a chamfer in the low-poly. Baking normal maps is usually reserved for ‘hero’ assets. More and more these days you will see single segment bevels in the low-poly (these used to be called mod-poly) with weighted normals.
You can clearly see the bevel here:
And this can be done automatically using the weighted normals modifier.
Thank you! Yeah, before asking here I’ve done a small research in sereval games by bumping the camera into different corners, as you can see
I figured out that devs often use one-faced bevel, but it was surpisingly harder to do myself. So yes, I will read more about mid-poly and auto weight
What is a standart? Feels like I’m missing something. And is there a faster way to make fine shading without manually selecting faces and setting normals?
