Dank Memes

For more graphically intensive games actually, this is shifting back bc polys are a lot cheaper than texel density these days. Games like Star Citizen, Alien Isolation, Cyberpunk and Starfield (or other hardsurface elements in games like firearms or vehicles) with insanely intricate hardsurface elements that the player needs to be able to be up close all around and inside can't use baked normals due to the fact it'd just be impossible to get a decent texel density and bake, so now games are shifting to something called 'face weighted normals' which basically means that all the big bevels and chamfers are actually part of the model's geo instead of being baked down. Smaller stuff like greebling will be a flat plane shrink wrapped to the curvature of a surface with baked detail as a displacement or normal map.