With ambient occlusion we have a little different situation, so you want to keep all the parts together, apart from those which are going to be moving.

Building Materials

As I previously mentioned, the gun was designed for a portfolio, so I could use any textures I wanted. The texture resolution for the rifle and the rifle-attached grenade launcher is 4096 x 4096. The sight, the magazine, the grenade itself have 2048×2048 texture. The foregrip is 1024×1024 and the bullet is 512×256.

If you’ve decided not to create some of the details or skip the text on the weapon (during the modeling of the weapon) you can easily use NDO. It’s important to do this before you start doing the project in DDO. Also NDO is great for converting normal map in other maps. You can convert new details into ambient occlusion and add them to the main map. You might also need cavity map.

To start the project in DDO you’ll need color ID map (this is applicable only when you have more than one material on the model). You can easily do this with the help of the 3DS Max. Just add the material to the necessary element. Each material should have a unique color. Don’t forget to add some edge padding during the rendering.

In Photoshop add the base layer, by picking up one of the already used colors. Add some details: you can add them yourself by painting over the outlines of normal map. You can follow the same process to apply the materials for the hi-poly model and using the projection to bake color ID with all the details.