Ok so I read some stuff already but I'd figure I'd ask to see what general practices are done. I have floating detail on alot of geometry that leaves nasty shadows when baking from high to low. Baking in modo right now and did a bake of the entire low and thinking just baking the seperate pieces with detail and doing some photoshop work.
Replies
you can then bake your normal when its together, and bake AO when they are apart. and just move the stuff you don't want to cast AO. its pretty easy to do and it works just fine.
Hope it helps.
You can also disable shadow cast in the object properties on your floater meshes in max?
Explode baking is to avoid errors with intersecting geometry, it wouldn't help with small floaters casting shadows.
Painting them out/baking multiple maps is a real pain in the ass, its what I used to do but there is generally a software solution.
Not the same thing as proper ao.
this, basically.
nb.: in xnormal, enable 'ignore backface hits' within the AO properties, not just in the general baking settings.
In max i assume you'd set FG to pass through the floater objects, and disable shadow casting (least that's how i manage my HP clay renders with floaters). Don't bake AO in max though, so just a hunch.