Give hard-surface assets the look of rounded edges without adding geometry or high-poly sources. InstaMAT\u2019s bevel baker delivers clean, production-ready normal maps that improve lighting and visual quality while keeping polygon counts low and performance high.<\/p>\n
\nInstaMAT\u2019s latest tutorial shows artists how to bake convincing bevel normals onto low-poly meshes, delivering the look of smooth rounded edges without adding geometry or high-poly source models.<\/p>\n
The process begins in the Baker. With no high-poly input required, activating the Bevel Normals option reveals controls for sample count, bevel radius, jitter, and surface offset. After baking, the resulting map is simply assigned to the material\u2019s tangent-space normal slot. Sharp edges instantly soften while the original low-poly topology remains unchanged.<\/p>\n
Iterative refinement is straightforward: reduce radius, tighten ray lengths, and lower jitter to eliminate noise. The same settings can be dialed interactively inside the Element Graph for real-time preview before transferring them back to the Baker for final production maps.<\/p>\n
The technique preserves runtime performance, simplifies pipelines, and produces normal maps compatible with any modern engine. Artists gain polished hard-surface detail at a fraction of the usual cost, making the bevel baker a valuable addition to efficient real-time workflows.<\/p>\n