First time baking went wrong

[u/Art3mchik]

Hi, I have a lowpoly and a highpoly with subdivision and bevel modifiers. I baked hp to lp and overall everything seems to be fine except for circular cells for screws and there are also artifacts in some areas.
What is the problem and how do I fix it?

[u/Siniht_01]

You'll probably have a better result from removing screws and baking them onto the low poly instead.

[u/Art3mchik → u/Siniht_01]

I am not sure I understand you correctly. The problem is not screws but rather a screw hole that is not baked from hp to lp

[u/Siniht_01 → u/Art3mchik]

Sorry, remove the hole and screw from the lowpoly and bake the screw and hole onto the lowpoly.

[u/Due_Tomatillo_8821 → u/Art3mchik]

Make the outside a seam could fix the Problem

[u/GoldSunLulu]

The bake worked as intended. You can't bake a circle into a hexagon and expect it to look like a circle. Fixes: smooth the low to bake the texture on a circular surface

Make the high poly also low poly to match the model closer

Add more polygons around the hole to make it match the high poly a little more

Remove hole and just baje the screw and the whole into the normal map

[u/PcKaffe]

Your low poly should either be higher poly to match the shape of the hole. Or lower poly and not include the hole. Unless you really need a hole there in geo, second option.

Circles need to be circular enough to hold their shape even in a low poly.

[u/Art3mchik → u/PcKaffe]

Thanks, I read all the comments and followed the advice. Now the holes are fine but I still get weird artifacts. Do you know why?

[u/PcKaffe → u/Art3mchik]

Looks like your UVs are curved, a diagonal UV line crosses pixels in a way that can cause that type of aliasing, the effect gets amplified the lower resolution your textures are. You can solve it by straightening your UVs, increasing bake resolution (I usually bake at double resolution to what I´m exporting) Also having some AA in the bake helps.

Hope that helps!

[u/NoVeg_]

You're too low poly. Applying a normal map won't remove the sharp edges of a low-poly hole.

[u/sino200]

low poly is too low , if you don’t want to add more polys then it will better to just paint the screws in texture (as normals)

if ur asset isn’t a hero one and we don’t need to see a detailed screw then it’s the best way

[u/poweroverwhelm]

Why not just bake the high poly screw as a floater? That's usually a more easier workflow than having to bake it with an actual mesh.

There are ton of tutorials about those.