23 minutes ago, davejones said:Would you know of any resources on how to bake a high poly mesh onto a low poly mesh?
This depends on what program you're using.
You're essentially taking the normal map from your high poly version and putting onto your low poly model. You will need to bake from your high poly model to create your map.
For zBrush:
46 minutes ago, davejones said:Would you know of any resources on how to bake a high poly mesh onto a low poly mesh?
The short answer is hit the "Bake" button. If you don't plan on learning normal mapping in depth then this is good enough. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking
The long answer is months if not years worth of information you are asking for, it is a really in depth topic.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_map , http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Ambient_occlusion_map These are the important things to know. AO maps are important when working with small details but not large details so much.
https://polycount.com/discussion/146667/a-practical-guide-on-normal-mapping-for-games Explains the things 3D artist do when baking normal maps; it's like a goto book if you want to double check something.
The only tips I can give you are:
There is no such thing as a perfect normal map, it would be pointless if it was perfect. Normals can't add or remove details. Normals are important to convey what the material is made from, however metal and rough maps can also do the job.
You can bake normals into the mesh vertices also; this often fixes bugs from engine and bake tools that are out of sync.
UV maps are 50% of 3D modeling. Learn clothing design to improve your UV maps; clothes patterns are the original UV maps.
When I use the proptimizer tool in 3ds max and than export the file as a .fbx file, the file size seems to be bigger than if I didn't use the prooptmizer tool. This has confused me as I thought reducing the polygons would decrease the file size.
