This video starting at 3m 43s shows the creation of a bolt sitting ontop of a plane (rather than joined with it).
However, because of this Ambient Occlusion bakes are not as good as they could be as the bake process is not able to calculate the settings 100% correctly without the meshes all being joined.
Some questions for the more experienced modellers.
- How do you deal with this? Do you join things all together for the bake process and then revert to a previous save to reduce the poly count again? Joining a single bolt to a plane adds 10 or so faces more than I needed with it just sitting ontop.
- If you do join the meshes what is the best way of doing this. Does there happen to be a shortcut or mod that quickly divides up my plane so it can accept my bolt without me having to divide it by hand?
- Also is it best to apply the bake to your texture (using gimp or something) or should I use one of the more advanced shaders that can accept an AO map.