Bake

Baking in 3ds Max

Before baking, you need UV information for the completed low-polygons. Please proceed after creating the UV map.

Please check the smoothing groups before rendering

Please organize the smoothing groups. If a face with an angle of more than 45 degrees is composed of a single smoothing group, the baked normal map will appear as if it is directly affected on the surface.

For the inner mesh, different smoothing groups should be specified.

Detach the UV of the separated mesh.

Place the created high-poly and low-poly on top of each other.

The low-poly should adequately cover the high-poly to appear similar in volume.

It's also smooth to handle the Cage in Projection.

Select [Projection] in the Modifier List.

In the Pick List, select the [HIGH] as the baking target.

Activate Shaded and adjust the Amount value to completely wrap the high-poly.

If the distance between the high-poly and Cage is too far, the quality of the baked normal map decreases.

Press shortcut 0 and execute [Render to Texture].

Set the options as follows:

Activate [Projection Mapping] - [Confirm Setup] - [Render Filter] - Check [Global Super Sampling] Option

[ADD] - Normal map 1024x1024 Size - Rendering

Set the baking size high and then reduce it as needed

Here is the completed normal map after rendering.

The red area below is caused by the lack of high-polygon information.

You need to clean up the basic normal map base color.

Complete to clean

Baking in Blender

Before baking, UV information for the completed low-polygon is required. Please create a UV map.

Setting the Scene for Bake

Go to [Edit] - [Preferences]- [System] tab and set [Cycles Render Device].

If the CPU performance is similar to or better than the graphics card, enable it; otherwise, disable it For GTX graphics card: Choose CUDA / For RTX graphics card: Choose OptiX.

Switch the Render Engine to [Cycles] in the Render tab.

Depending on the PC environment, changing the Device option to GPU Compute can improve the baking speed.

Set up the [Render] - [Bake] settings as follows:

Bake Normal map

Select the low-polygon and deactivate Auto Smooth under Data - Normals.

Press the Tab key to switch to Edit Mode, select the outer and inner faces, then right-click - Shade Smooth.

Align the low-polygon and high-polygon so that they completely overlap.

Check if both the low-polygon and high-polygon are visible.

Click the [Shading] button at the top to switch to the Shading Editor.

Select the low-polygon and, if there is no applied material, click the [New] button to add a new material.

Set up the material nodes as shown in the image below.

Click the [New] button of the Image Texture to create a new texture.

If there is an applied material for the high-polygon, click the X button to remove it.

With the high-polygon selected, hold down the Shift key and select the low-polygon.

If selecting from the Outliner instead of the Viewport, hold down the Ctrl key while selecting the low-polygon after selecting the high-polygon.

Please check the color of the model name shown in the outliner. The low-polygon should be yellow (active).

Press the [Bake] button in [Render] - [Bake] to render the normal map.

In [Render] - [Bake] - [Selected to Active], adjust the Extrusion value and Max Ray Distance value gradually to render a clean and sharp normal map.