Blender user here. Picture related, model viewer in UE4. How can I fix these ugly spots?
Topology of the area in question
>>561034
Did you applying smoothing completely randomly?
>>561035
Are there any specific mistakes I'm making? Would appreciate some pointers, I'd like to unfuck the situation before they become bad habits
>>561036
I used edge creases and subdivision to bake normals. I tried using autosmooth and sharp edges at one point, but that just made the edges look bad and pretty low-poly
its a shading error.
make it highpoly then bake
triangulate before you bake
OP can you drop a link to an FBX or obj of project files?
>>561035
Motherfucker, why don't you guys actually explain why the topologies are bad? I also don't know the reasons and I might learn something while I'm fresh.
The only things I can see is that maybe the lines could be straighter and have a smoother flow on a trigger.
OP here on mobile. Did slight topology work last night. I'll try the shit you guys mentioned when I get home, and I'll upload an fbx as well
OP again, here's an FBX. Low poly and high poly are both included, but I didn't include the half-finished retopo.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vf8b319qmit8rz2/python.fbx?dl=0
>>561096
>>561108
>>561194
1) This forum is very slow
2) Anytime someone gives you a one line response, esp if it's of the "it's shit lmao kill urself" variety, they are trolling
3) The topology seems a little dense but that shouldn't be causing shading errors. The kinds of things that cause shading errors or pinching are n-gons, poles, non-manifold geometry, and so on (which I didn't notice in your wires).
Why do you think the artifacts are Normal based? Are you only getting that from a Normal map applied to your low poly?
Anyway, just to be sure, I'd open up the .blend, go to edit mode, select all, do Remove Doubles, hit Ctrl N to recalculate Normals, make sure there's no non-manifold geometry, make sure you didn't use an Edge Split Modifier (if you did it should be corrected by Remove Doubles)
If it's literally a problem you're getting with your high poly to low poly bake, welcome to Normal maps. It's fiddly as shit in any program, and you might have to manually retouch the map (though if you have everything setup correctly, which is quite hard, you won't need to).
>>561033
It was your smoothing groups for the most part. Not to mention the fact that you didn't uvunwrap the barrel. I didn't waste my time fixing your errors but the solution that will help you the most is to align your UV islands to your smoothing groups. I would also recommend keeping all three uv islands on the same map as it was a retarded bake. You don't have too, but for a game asset this simplistic it's not worth it to make multiple maps. The only thing I might suggest is using decals to keep a crisp texture for the details, and use a 2K map in game with detail textures overlayed.
>>561222
Fixing most of your errors*