No problem! Dithering is well explained in this stickied thread: http://polycount.com/discussion/148303/of-bit-depths-banding-and-normal-maps Basically it adds a bit of noise as you convert a texture from 16 bits to 8 bits. This can be beneficial because when that rounding I mentioned happens, you can end up with pixels…
Good questions! 1) You don't have to use a cage when using match by name (it is basically making one for you based off those ray distance values), but I have experienced cage bakes looking slightly better. 2) That would be very surprising if true but I can't speak to that. 3) No, but more geometry means you can get the low…
Both Designer and Painter make an averaged cage if not provided one, which is necessary to make the "match by name" technique work (where you can throw it one high and one low file with properly named objects and it bakes and combines them all in one go.) @Zalek4 you won't see much mileage out of dithering on such a…
"I make sure there are separate smoothing groups assigned to each UV island" You absolutely do not need to do that, at all. Some people do it because their assets or art style just happens to be visually compatible with this brute force approach, but this is absolutely not a necessary condition. By doing so, you simply run…
While this is focused on Toolbag 3's baker, the following tutorial covers all of your issues and then some: https://www.marmoset.co/posts/toolbag-baking-tutorial/ Check out the Basics and Best Results sections. "I never said that it is "pointless to worry about smoothing groups", quite the contrary. What I am saying is…