Substance Painter, AO/Height after painting?

Fuiosg

I'm trying to wrap my head around the substance painter workflow, and one thing I'm confused about is if you're using the NRM channel or Height channel to paint screws, indentations, panels, etc. How do you extract AO if you need it? 

And if using the NRM channel only, height as well?

I'm probably expecting too much and these simply need to be modeled/baked.

Jerc

You can use either channels or both, depending on what brushes you have available. The final result is the same, since the height is converted to a normal map and blended with the normal channel in the background.
To extract the AO though, you'll have to export the final normal map with all your painted details, and reimport it in your project, plug it instead of your original bake and rebake the AO. curvature, etc. 
Then you can put your original bake back in the slot.

We are working on making this workflow easier.