I can think of 3 things that would cause the floaters not to render. *You've set the bake to only render onto matching Mat IDs *The cage isnt covering the floaters *The floaters are not added to the projection modifier. The conform space warp is quite nice for this too.
There are a few ways to do that. 1) You can use one of 2 spline paint scripts, one is in graphite modeling tools the other is in Soulburns tools. These allow you to paint a spline on the surface of any other object(s) the object paint tools are also good good at placing rivets and other floaters. 2) Apply a new edit poly…