Workflows and Experimental Pipelines

Build the base mesh in CAD. This is the source geometry for the pipeline, not a finished high-poly.

Edge treatment:

• Fillet/bevel only edges that change the silhouette or are integral to shading.
• No micro filleting. As a rule of thumb, treat fillets as destructive: they are hard to remove or undo later, and harder to edit and manipulate.
• When unsure, leave it sharp. Hard corners bake clean via the bevel pass.

Generate the game-res mesh from the CAD base. Auto-retopo gets the model to "good enough," but studio standards expect efficient topology, so manual cleanup is inevitable.

Process:

• Export your cad mesh as a STEP file
• Run auto-retopo to establish the base low-poly from (manual retopologization in polygonal software is possible but inherently slower, only do this if your model is simple.)
• Manually fix the output. Auto-retopo rarely produces shippable density or flow on its own.

Topology rules:

• Edge loops follow the silhouette and major shading transitions.
• Place loops, cut, and merge where it would be efficient for UV unwrapping later
• Spend polys where the silhouette curves; keep planar surfaces low-density.
• Clean quad/tri flow, no n-gons, no wasted edge loops on flat areas.
• Avoid small or thin triangulation
• Ensure cylinders are properly oriented (One edge at minimum should be oriented perfectly with X, Y, or Z planes)
• Triangulate before export, so mesh shading is consistent in game engines and texture software.

Lay out UVs on the retopo'd low-poly. Clean UVs are required for a clean bevel bake, seams and distortion show up directly in the baked normals.

Rule of thumb: Every hard edge is a UV seam, but not every UV seam is a hard edge.

Process:

• Set your texel density and texture resolution, and stay consistent.
• Mark seams along edges hidden from the player's camera, at natural part breaks, or where needed to minimize distortion.
• Unwrap and relax. Check with a checker map for even texel density and low distortion.
• Pack shells to the target texel density. Don't pack too tightly, downscaling (4096 -> 2048) can cause pixel bleed.
• Separate UV sets smartly. On a weapon, for example, a swappable optic should be its own UV set.

Rules:

• Keep seams off prominent silhouette edges and high-traffic areas (where the player camera most often views the prop), where the bake will show them.
• Some distortion is fine, too much is bad.
• Uniform texel density across shells, unless an area needs more resolution, or less if it's barely visible (inside a weapon magazine, for example).
• Straighten shells on hard-surface flats to save space and reduce aliasing.
• Pad shells enough to avoid bleed at the target map resolution.

Bake the low-poly in Marmoset Toolbag. The bevel rounds hard edges procedurally, so the micro-bevels skipped in CAD get faked here at zero geometry cost.

Setup:

• Make an exploded version of your low-poly model.
• Load the triangulated, exploded low-poly into Marmoset as the low.
• Create a bake group: put the exploded mesh in the low slot, then duplicate it and put the copy in the high slot.
• Set the renderer to Ray Tracing - the bevel shader only works under ray tracing.
• Frame the cage so it wraps the mesh without clipping. Tighten the max offset / ray distance so the bevel doesn't catch neighboring surfaces. A loose or bad cage degrades how the bevels read.

Bevel:

• On the high, enable Bevel on the normal output, then set the bevel width to the look you want.
• Raise the sample count until the rounded edges read clean with no stepping.
• Use as many materials as you need at different bevel widths, so parts aren't all beveled to the same width.
• Check for skewing or waviness on flats. Fix with the cage or the skew/offset controls.
• Keep bevels readable from a distance - small bevels read poorly in games.

Texture the low-poly in Substance 3D Painter using the maps baked in Marmoset.

Setup:

• Determine your PBR pipeline, Metal-rough or Spec-Gloss
• Import the un-exploded game mesh, not the exploded bake version.
• Set the document resolution to your target and the normal format (OpenGL or DirectX) to match your engine. (Important, Marmoset exports normals as Open GL, flip Y for DirectX)
• Plug the Marmoset bakes into the mesh map slots: Normal, AO, Curvature, Thickness, Position, Color ID. If you prefer substance, bake said maps in substance bake menu instead.
• Check the maps look and are rendering correctly on to your model

Texturing:

• Block in base materials, then build up: base, Rough, grime, edgewear - using stencils and generators driven by curvature and AO a
• Keep values physically plausible: sane roughness and metalness, no pure-black or pure-white albedo.
• Add surface detail (scratches, micro-normal) only where it reads at viewing distance.

Build the base mesh in CAD. This is the source geometry for the pipeline, not a finished high-poly.

Edge treatment:

• Fillet/bevel only edges that change the silhouette or are integral to shading.
• No micro filleting. As a rule of thumb, treat fillets as destructive: they are hard to remove or undo later, and harder to edit and manipulate.
• When unsure, leave it sharp. Hard corners bake clean via the bevel pass.

Generate the game-res mesh from the CAD base. Auto-retopo gets the model to "good enough," but studio standards expect efficient topology, so manual cleanup is inevitable.

Process:

• Export your cad mesh as a STEP file
• Run auto-retopo to establish the base low-poly from (manual retopologization in polygonal software is possible but inherently slower, only do this if your model is simple.)
• Manually fix the output. Auto-retopo rarely produces shippable density or flow on its own.

Topology rules:

• Edge loops follow the silhouette and major shading transitions.
• Place loops, cut, and merge where it would be efficient for UV unwrapping later
• Spend polys where the silhouette curves; keep planar surfaces low-density.
• Clean quad/tri flow, no n-gons, no wasted edge loops on flat areas.
• Avoid small or thin triangulation
• Ensure cylinders are properly oriented (One edge at minimum should be oriented perfectly with X, Y, or Z planes)
• Triangulate before export, so mesh shading is consistent in game engines and texture software.

Lay out UVs on the retopo'd low-poly. Clean UVs are required for a clean bevel bake, seams and distortion show up directly in the baked normals.

Rule of thumb: Every hard edge is a UV seam, but not every UV seam is a hard edge.

Process:

• Set your texel density and texture resolution, and stay consistent.
• Mark seams along edges hidden from the player's camera, at natural part breaks, or where needed to minimize distortion.
• Unwrap and relax. Check with a checker map for even texel density and low distortion.
• Pack shells to the target texel density. Don't pack too tightly, downscaling (4096 -> 2048) can cause pixel bleed.
• Separate UV sets smartly. On a weapon, for example, a swappable optic should be its own UV set.

Rules:

• Keep seams off prominent silhouette edges and high-traffic areas (where the player camera most often views the prop), where the bake will show them.
• Some distortion is fine, too much is bad.
• Uniform texel density across shells, unless an area needs more resolution, or less if it's barely visible (inside a weapon magazine, for example).
• Straighten shells on hard-surface flats to save space and reduce aliasing.
• Pad shells enough to avoid bleed at the target map resolution.

Polish the dense CAD mesh in ZBrush to round its hard edges. A morph target lets you polish heavily for clean, even edges, then paint the tight details back so small features don't get washed out.

Export and import:

• Export a dense mesh from your CAD file. It should be dense enough that its wireframe reads as solid dark grey across the whole model.
• Import it into ZBrush and DynaMesh to unify the topology for sculpting.
• If DynaMesh can't give enough resolution on a part, scale that subtool up 2-3x in size, DynaMesh again, then scale it back. Resolution tracks subtool size.

Polish (morph target method):

• Polish to the minimum / tightest edge amount you want.
• Store this as a morph target.
• Continue polishing to the maximum / thickest amount.
• Use the Morph brush to paint the tight details back in where polishing washed them out.

Texture the low-poly in Substance 3D Painter using the maps baked from your polished ZBrush high-poly.

Setup:

• Determine your PBR pipeline, Metal-Rough or Spec-Gloss.
• Bake the polished ZBrush high-poly onto the retopo'd low-poly: Normal, AO, Curvature, Thickness, Position, Color ID. Bake in Marmoset, or in Substance's bake menu if you prefer.
• Plug the baked maps into the matching mesh map slots. Match the normal format (OpenGL or DirectX) to your engine. (Important: Marmoset exports OpenGL normals, flip the Y channel for DirectX.)
• Check the maps load and render correctly on the model.

Texturing:

• Block in base materials, then build up: base, roughness, grime, edge wear - using stencils and generators driven by curvature and AO.
• Keep values physically plausible: sane roughness and metalness, no pure-black or pure-white albedo.
• Add surface detail (scratches, micro-normal) only where it reads at viewing distance.

Block out the form in Maya or Blender as a clean, all-quad control cage. This cage drives every subdivision downstream, so nail the silhouette and proportions before adding any detail.

Cage rules:

• All quads, evenly spaced. No triangles or n-gons in the cage.
• Get the silhouette and proportions right at low density first.
• Keep poles (5+ edge junctions) off curved and high-visibility surfaces.
• Model to real-world scale.

Add support/holding edges to control how the cage creases, then subdivide to the smooth high-poly. Tight support loops read as sharp edges, wider loops as soft.

Process:

• Add support loops along each hard edge - spacing sets the edge sharpness.
• Prefer real support geometry over creasing; creasing can pinch and is harder to predict.
• Subdivide 2-3 levels and check curved surfaces for pinching, wobble, or smoothing errors.
• Fix bad shading at the cage, not by stacking on more loops.

Derive the game mesh from the control cage. Strip the support loops down to an efficient mesh that still holds the silhouette, or retopo if the cage is too dense.

Topology rules:

• Keep the loops that hold the silhouette; drop support loops that only existed for the subdivision.
• Clean quad/tri flow, no n-gons, no wasted loops on flats.
• Spend polys where the silhouette curves; keep planar areas low.
• Triangulate before export for consistent shading in-engine.

Lay out UVs on the low-poly. Clean UVs are required for a clean bake - seams and distortion show up directly in the baked normals.

Process:

• Mark seams at natural part breaks and on edges hidden from the camera.
• Unwrap and relax; check texel density and distortion with a checker map.
• Straighten shells on flats, pad them, and keep density uniform unless an area needs more or less.

Bake the subdivided high-poly onto the low-poly in Marmoset or Substance.

Process:

• Explode parts that would catch each other, then bake with a fitted cage.
• Output Normal, AO, Curvature, Thickness, Position, Color ID.
• Check for skewing or waviness on flats and invisible seams; fix with the cage.

Texture the low-poly in Substance 3D Painter using the baked maps.

Setup:

• Decide your PBR pipeline, Metal-Rough or Spec-Gloss.
• Plug the baked maps into the mesh map slots; match the normal format (OpenGL or DirectX) to your engine.
• Check the maps load and render correctly on the model.

Texturing:

• Block in base materials, then build up: base, roughness, grime, edge wear - using stencils and generators driven by curvature and AO.
• Keep values physically plausible: sane roughness and metalness, no pure-black or pure-white albedo.
• Add surface detail (scratches, micro-normal) only where it reads at viewing distance.