I have a directional light set up and casting shadows disabled on the geometry that is floating but when I render out a picture it still is very obvious it is floating above it. Is their a step i am missing?
floaters should align to the geometry they are floating above. if you were to do a test render using th emethod you described you would see that it would be completely wrong.
Floating geometry isn't particularly for rendering, it's for baking maps. If you're rendering it you will always get that light difference because it is physically closer to the light. Also, if you plan on baking that into a mesh make sure the indent isn't at a 90 degree angle or you'll get crappy results in your normal…