Article by Jordan Cain

Introducing Low to Low Baking

Hello, my name is Jordan Cain, and I’m a freelance 3D hard surface artist. With the latest introduction of Low to Low Baking in Toolbag 5.02, it has become very easy to bake down textures directly from a low poly mesh. Using this feature alongside the Bevel Shader allows you to focus more on design than technical topology and further streamlines texture workflows. In this article, I’ll cover some of my techniques and demonstrate how to simplify your workflow and save many hours as a result.

More Than Bevels

The bevel shader does more than just smooth edges; it also blends surfaces between objects, allowing you to create complex forms using simple shapes and primitives.

Don’t want to worry about cleaning up booleans? No problem! Just mash objects together without joining them. In the Material window, select your material and find the Surface panel. Change the shading model from Normals to Bevel. From there, you can start playing with the bevel settings. If you find that your model appears faceted, try setting the Bevel Angle to 0. Otherwise, have fun with it!

Controlling Bevel Widths

There are multiple ways to control bevel widths in your model. If you have a material that requires different bevel widths, duplicating the material and setting a new width is a viable option. This method requires either mesh or material ID separation.

Enabling the Bevel Same Surface Only option also grants finer control on a per-material basis.

From Days to Hours

Depending on the asset, you can turn completion time from days to hours with this method combined with subdivision techniques. This asset took two hours from start to bake.

The Low to Low baking method allows you to skip the need to duplicate your mesh in the high poly group and bake straight from your final mesh. And with the unified material preview, multiple materials in your low poly are baked to a single sheet with mat IDs, and you can proceed to texture as normal.

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