Noob questions. I watched that old Racer445 video on baking normal maps in Max. In it, he explodes (separates) various elements of his model before baking a normal map. I learned soon after that there's a much easier way to accomplish the same thing w/out exploding, by assigning matching material IDs to elements in your…
Thanks for the answers. OK, after playing around a little, I kinda get it. You get little artifacts when you don't explode / match matIDs. They're not terrible, but still. After thinking about it a little more, I guess overall this is really more of a modeling question. It's a given you're going to bake out normals for an…
1. Elements baked separately to avoid artefacts on the bake. Try to bake two intersecting pieces and you'll see what I mean. 2. You bake them like that so pieces don't intersect or touch each other. I'm simplifying here. Surely, somebody can explain better than I can.