Does Max bake animation down to the component level? The separate pieces you are exploding should be under their own transforms instead of the same one, so you can modify each piece individually and still use the same animation. You can export it as one object anyway so it's better to leave it separate in the scene.
I remade the low poly on the problem area after completely re-exploding everything (one mesh, elements animated). Then I scrolled back and realized that, just like every other time I've done any significant change, the animation is broken and the model is stuck in explosion. Does anyone esle have these issues with this…
I mean you only return exploded meshes in their original places after baking. You shouldn't have any troubles with that if you don't modify them. Explode, bake, un-explode - that's how it works. Every other work with meshes you do in their original positions. Or you can save yourself trouble and just use bake by material…
As for the stickies it's more about what people say and the discussions than the images, the text has the real gold. Baking is a difficult thing to grasp, takes a lot of trying and failing. You can modify the highpoly to make life easier, like that lip bring the highpoly closer so there is no lip there. You could take a…