Using the merge actor tool on objects with a material that utilizes nodes such as ‘ActorPosition’, ‘ObjectPosition’ and ‘WorldPosition’ will not bake the materials properly.
Even if a single object is selected, the resulting baked material will not match the original.
Example: a group of objects using a material that maps color to actor position:
The resulting merged actor is:
Note that not only did the bake fail, as all the cubes have the same material and the texture is a solid green, but also the resulting color doesn’t even match any of the cubes.
I tried the same thing using ObjectPosition instead of ActorPosition and the result is the same.
Finally, i replaced the ActorPosition node with the WorldPosition node. Note that even though the bake was ‘better’, it still failed, since the resulting texture doesn’t match the original objects.
Original:
Merged:
