Getting critical feedback on here seems to be difficult.
My thoughts are that my sculpts probably needed sharper edges to convey the cracks better, and those probably should have been enhanced more in the color. I started using color burn on the edges of the geometry and cracks, and it looked good, but I ran out of time.
I also think I should have gone back and retopoed the outer wheel rings once they were assembled and rebaked.
I also wasn’t sure if it was eevee light setup, or if my baking process was faulty, but the only way I got normals to bake right were by using shade smooth on both the high res and low res objects, with no sharp edges. But then the low res would still seem to double down on the shading, and apply shading based on the normal map, AND the low poly normals. This made me go back and put holding edges on things (but i noticed my final result didn’t have them on there consistently). I’m planning on watching @jlampel ‘s normal map course when i get home this weekend, hopefully that will clear some things up for me.
