Ambient Occlusion Error (Max)

Weirdboy

I'm trying to render a low poly ambient occlusion map in 3DS Max with mental ray and I keep getting this error (First image) I've turned off cast shadows on both the general tab and adv lighting tab of my floating geometry objects, as the wiki tells me to, but still get the error.

I'm also getting this weird artifacting around another part of the model (Second image)

Can anyone help me with this? The pieces below needs to look like they are set into the model, not floating above it.

Weirdboy

Bump

So I tried baking an ambient occlusion map in xnormal using a cage and got some more weird artifacting going on (First image) you can see some artifacts around the recessed parts of the image as well as strand of highlight running through an area that should be shaded (may be difficult to see)

Second image shows the setting I used for that bake(What are considered optimal setting for Xnormal AO bake)

The third image shows shows my low poly model next to the high poly with floaters. The floating geometry isn't translating very well into the shadows coming out of Xnormal. Should I make the inset parts of the floaters deeper, or is it something to do with the settings?