To weld instanced parts after bake or not?

Chase

Is it ok to bake a section of a model that you will rotate instances around after you bake, and weld the verts of these instances? Let's say you have a 32 sided sphere. you only want to worry about 1/8 of it to bake. you bake that 1/8, rotate copies and then weld the copies. Is this the same thing as editing the geo after you bake which you're not suppose to do?

James Ordner

If the normals of the mesh don't change from the weld, or the UVs don't move, then it might work. Editing geo after you bake isn't a no no, but you have to be really careful.

Chase

Thanks James! I didn't see any negative effects from welding the verts so I should be all clear. On another note I'm getting ready to bake the AO maps for my carousel. I figured I could do the same thing I did with the normal map bake. That is can I just bake the lighting to the 1 part and then instance it. Would that be correct?