Trouble with baking cylindrical objects This is a half Blender/half XNormal question. I'm having difficulty with baking cylindrical surfaces. I'm trying to bake normals and occlusion for the twisted top edging of a wicker basket. Here is the high poly: 



The low poly on top:



And the fantastic result: 



How can I get a better bake with a shape like this?

I used the shrink wrap modifier which increased the vertex count too much and the result was equally awful: 



Here is a link to a blend file with the shrink wrapped low poly model and the high poly twist model:
Will this old method work for you ... using a prerendered hemisphere normal texture.

Basically I have attached a shadeless material of a normal rendering of a hemisphere. You will find the image packed in the blend file. Using a orthographic camera I render from the top view of the model. Also I have replaced the color of the background to a flat normal color which is (R0.5,G0.5,B1.0)



This is where you change the background color under the world tab on the
properties panel.



Hit the render button on the Render panel and you should get this result.





Let me know if you have further queries.