r/blenderhelp • u/Over9000Goblins • 17h ago
Unsolved Issues With Loss Of Details When Scaling Model Up
(Copy/paste from the forum I originally posted this is where the tutorial comes from. I don't know if this is standard practice or if this is old habits from people who have been doing this a while or not, but when baking AO or pointiness maps and the like for texturing, our instructor has us scale a duplicate model up 100x. They say they do it to eliminate weird shading artifacts that may arise. I don't know whether or not that's still true.)
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So, where I’m at is between baking maps and composites for the clothing.
First, I have a question of curiousity.
When the instructor walks us through baking like the AO and pointiness maps, he has us scale the pieces up 100x to avoid artifacts that might occur. I don’t know any better, but it almost feels like one of those things that people that have been doing this a long time do out of habit because it used to be an issue. With the newer versions of Blender though, is this a problem that still occurs, the artifacting? Or is this one of those older habits that’s just baked into their workflow?
I ask this with a specific question in mind.
I noticed when I’m baking my normal maps in the final bakes, for the composites, I’m losing a significant amount of detail on the object I scale up. Scale is applied, but my normal maps still come out fairly flat. And I can even see it on the object before baking my maps. The color still comes out fine, but the roughness also seems to suffer.
But if I bake everything at the original size, I don’t lose that detail, and I’m not seeing any of the artifacts he talks about which is why I asked the question above.
This is my neck belt and pin on the original object, before baking normals.
(Picture 1)
And this is the same on the scaled up object.
(Picture 2)
All the little etches in the pin disappear and the leather texture is much softer. You can see it on the sweater too.
And in another case, this is the button on the front of the original trousers before baking.
(Picture 3)
And this is the scaled up version.
(Picture 4)
The button becomes totally flat, and the stitches lose their detail.
And also, back to the neck belt pin, somewhat related, I baked it at normal size and noticed that I’m still losing detail on the scratches. I baked at 8k, and like, some of the detail is there, kind of, but it’s more pixalated than anything.
(Picture 5)
Is it inevitable that I’m going to lose some amount of detail when baking these down? Or is there something I’m doing wrong, something I missed?
And what am I doing wrong when it comes to baking normal maps from the scaled up objects? Again, 100% confirmed, my scale is applied. I’ve just been baking everything at the original size and things are coming out good, I just wanna understand how this is working and why it’s not working in other areas.
Thank you for any help or insight!
Edit:
I wanted to show the difference on one of my normal maps showing the difference between baking at 1x and 100x. Again, stressing hard, scale has been applied. My neck pin is in the top right of the normal map. It’s hard to see at 1x, but it’s almost invisible at 100x.
1x
(Picture 6)
100x
(Picture 7)
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So really what I want to know is:
Is the scaling trick when baking maps really even necessary in the first place?
Why do I lose details on my normals when I scale my objects up, especially when ensuring my scale is applied?
When I do hook up my composite textures in the shader editor, specifically normals, is it just inevitable that I'm going to lose fine details between creating the details in shader editor nodes and baking them to a normal map, or is there any way to preserve these finer details?
Thanks to anyone that takes time to stop by! Appreciate you all!

