When do you use a cage vs using distance-based raycast (cageless)

3D4Eva

When do you use a cage vs using distance-based raycast (cageless) ? I've heard that it works best to use a cage if you have an object like a hand for example, or something with sharp 90 degree edges, but I'm not sure on when to use it and when using a cageless bake by distance is good enough.

Kanni3d

Yes, averaged bakes/cage bakes work best for organic assets with no hard edges/single smoothing group, and can be problematic for hard surface assets, as averaged bakes introduce skewing to your models details. Best to just not worry and always bake with a cage/average normals, while using something like Marmoset to paint away skewed details. This solves about 90% of skew cases on your bakes, but sometimes you'll need to manually add in vertices/edges to minimize skewing when baking with a cage.

Cageless/non-averaged bakes have zero skewing issues, but you'll get problematic bakes on corners/hard edges.

poopipe

If there's no cage then it should be projecting out along mesh normals to a constant distance - as such you can use mesh normals to control skewing etc.

A cage allows you to control that distance and is good for preventing issues  in tight spaces - they are pretty much essential for character work (fingers)

Manipulation of the cage mesh can allow you to skew projection direction - this is a hack and you should be ashamed when you take advantage of it to get around a problem (see point 1 for the correct approach) 

Fwiw I almost never need a cage when  baking hard surface objects and almost always use one for organics