Aaaaaaaand, FAILURE!!!!
I thought I had a great system in hand. Make the high-poly object version; then make the low poly counterpart; then bake out the high-poly detail in a normal map and bake it onto the low poly version. This approach failed for 2 reasons. 1) The normal map had too many details and curves and as a result no matter what settings I tried it generated too many render errors. 2) The only way to see the normal map effect is with a traditional light. Kind of hard to bake a low poly texture with equal lighting using traditional lights instead of an illumination globe. Here's the results:
Not disasterous but not what I want them to be. So I'm going to have to do a little more work. I'll go back to the high-poly object and generate a UV which will line up as closely as possible with the low poly version then bake out the detail of the high poly version onto the UV. It's do-able, but it's more work than I wanted it to be.
I thought I had a great system in hand. Make the high-poly object version; then make the low poly counterpart; then bake out the high-poly detail in a normal map and bake it onto the low poly version. This approach failed for 2 reasons. 1) The normal map had too many details and curves and as a result no matter what settings I tried it generated too many render errors. 2) The only way to see the normal map effect is with a traditional light. Kind of hard to bake a low poly texture with equal lighting using traditional lights instead of an illumination globe. Here's the results:
Not disasterous but not what I want them to be. So I'm going to have to do a little more work. I'll go back to the high-poly object and generate a UV which will line up as closely as possible with the low poly version then bake out the detail of the high poly version onto the UV. It's do-able, but it's more work than I wanted it to be.