Texture Baking tutorials

[jacksc02]

Hi Guys,
Im after a tutorial for baking textures on an exterior architecural scene.

Does anyone have one or know of one that is around??

Thanks in advance!

[dansimon]

hey jacks,

know this is an old thread but was wondering if u did find any tuts of texture baking??

[rpc212]

Yep, this would be good to have. Anyone have any ideas? Always wondered about texture baking.

[cpnichols]

One of the chapters on my new DVD is about texture baking... but to be honest, I only see limited reasons why you would want to use it.

[jacksc02]

dansimon- i never did find any tutorials

[dansimon]

booh, yeah. bakeing would be useful for larger scense where u have large surrounding geometry like misc houseing and terrain. guess it would speed up renders a bit.

[n6]

One of the chapters on my new DVD is about texture baking... but to be honest, I only see limited reasons why you would want to use it.

for game level design, web3d and for all real time use... is that enough?

[sunnyc1]

Hi Guys,

If you're still interested, here's some useful tips I've found whilst baking
textures:

* Only bother baking the largest and most obvious surfaces, such as
floors, walls, ceilings. Don't bother trying to bake the whole scene. It
will take a month.

* It's always good to keep your baked textures sq. ie. 256x256, 512x512,
1024x1024. I think it's a video card display issue. Someone correct me
if I'm wrong. So subdivide your mesh into large square surfaces.

* Using subdivided square meshes also means your maximising the area
of the baked texture in the saved image. The saved image is always
square. If you baked a rectangle for example, you'd be wasting half the
area in the baked texture with black.

* Definitely use Max's baking engine.

* If you've baked an object, don't like the result, delete the automatic
uvw unwrap from the modifier before re-baking. I've noticed it can
cause baking errors for future calculations.

Predominantly we use baking for Real Time simulation software, but have
started using it for very large architecturals. Particularly interior scenes
where there's a lot of lighting required. Takes time to setup, but saves a
lot in render times.

SunnyC
ivolve studios

[n6]

* Only bother baking the largest and most obvious surfaces, such as
floors, walls, ceilings. Don't bother trying to bake the whole scene. It
will take a month.

That's sure that backing all scene objects require more work particulary a very precise UVMAP for the backing, but that's the price you have to pay for a very realistic result.

* It's always good to keep your baked textures sq. ie. 256x256, 512x512,
1024x1024. I think it's a video card display issue. Someone correct me
if I'm wrong. So subdivide your mesh into large square surfaces.

Yes but today's video card support at least 2048x2048 and a lot of them 4096x4096 and one texture of 2048x2048 is allways a better choice than 16 texture of 512x512.

* Using subdivided square meshes also means your maximising the area
of the baked texture in the saved image. The saved image is always
square. If you baked a rectangle for example, you'd be wasting half the
area in the baked texture with black.

No. Subdivising your geometry like you say would introduce a lot of seams in the backed texture and so more potential texture leaks.
With a good packing you should not lost a large amount of space in the backed texture. But again packing uv cant be 100% automated if you want very good efficiency.

here is the famous SIbenik cathedrale 100% backed for realtime 3D walkthrough (near 50 000 polys after optimization) only one lightmap of 2048x2048 cover the entire geometry (plus of course texture for base material) :


(this is still a Work In Progress )











and the lightmap (here reduced to 1024x1024) :

[themaxxer]

what do you mean with: "only one lightmap of 2048x2048 cover the entire geometry (plus of course texture for base material)"

what's the setup for your material?
do I have to put the *.tga to diffuse slot with 100% self-illumination?
what kind of map do I have to render? complete, diffuse, or...?

best regards
themaxxer

[mike.edel]

realtime 3d used to require power-of-2-sized textures
this has changed but they are still much faster

maximum texture size for one texture depends on your graphics card and driver
geforces with current drivers support 4096x4096
btw: power of 2 means both sides have to be a power of two but not necessarily the same (so no need for square textures)

yes, one larger texture for all objects is faster than one smaller texture for each of them
but you will get into trouble with spacing of the different areas (a lot of wasted texture space that increases with the number of different non-continuous areas in the texture)
so it might be worthwhile to use more than one texture but have those laid out well

there are several limiting factors that determine the speed of realtime 3d
fill rate, transfer rate, cpu time, memory bandwidth, pixel shaders, vertex shaders, rasterization.
textures are only a part of the problem

example: physique (character studio) animation of a high-density mesh in max
cpu-usage 100% (mesh topology changes and has to be sent to graphics card every frame), no matter how good you bake the textures, it will alway be limited by the cpu

if you are interested you might want to read this stuff:
http://developer.nvidia.com/docs/IO/...timisation.pdf
http://www.ati.com/developer/dx9/ATI...timization.pdf
http://www.realtimerendering.com/#pipeopt

basicly, it all depends on your realtime engine and target audience (which card and cpu do they use?)
if you have access to the code (self-written or open source) you have more influence (or your programmer has

ask your developers (coders) for advice what they think works best, it's a complex matter and they (should) understand it

if you have a stock engine (quest3d, vrml *shudder*), ask the developers or try different sizes/optimizations

oh and one thing: determine your target audience (i.e. graphics card + maybe the cpu) first
there are vast differences between the gc generations and chips (ati vs nvidia)

cu mike

[n6]

what do you mean with: "only one lightmap of 2048x2048 cover the entire geometry (plus of course texture for base material)"

what's the setup for your material?
do I have to put the *.tga to diffuse slot with 100% self-illumination?
what kind of map do I have to render? complete, diffuse, or...?

best regards
themaxxer

It depends on your 3D viewer. Only some support mujltitexturing that allow you to use the same compositing technic than in Combustion After Effect etc...
In the exemple above I have render a *.vrimg from the vray frame buffer then extract the raw GI and raw lighting channel.
Then in the code for the real time 3D engine I use ( BSContact ) I have multiply the rawgi with the based material (diffuse) and then add the rawlighting.
If your 3D engine doesnt support multitexturing or multipath rendering your only way to go is to bake a complete material (diffuse x gi + lighting) wich will give a less detailed visual result.

[themaxxer]

It depends on your 3D viewer. Only some support mujltitexturing that allow you to use the same compositing technic than in Combustion After Effect etc

can I make this in max? I would like to use the baking method for animations with moving objects...

best regards
themaxxer

[mike.edel]

can I make this in max? I would like to use the baking method for animations with moving objects...

best regards
themaxxer

there is limited support for animation within vrml, especially using the blaxxun vrml exporter
that said, only object transformations (move/rotate/scale) are supported in a useful way. though by principle you could deform objects, the file size tends to explode if you do it. (each vertex position of the object gets saved for each animation frame)

i really haven't looked into vrml lately but there are better realtime vizualisation systems out there.
those usually are external tools with their own authoring applications
some i know are:
quest3d
http://www.quest3d.com
royalty-free, needs some programming/developer skills

rtre
http://www.cubicspace.com

cult3d
http://www.cult3d.com
you need to purchase a license to publish the projcet

virtools
http://www.virtools.com

be warned, though, all of these more or less need a high level of knowledge about realtime 3d and tend to need programming skills to give the spectacular results seen in the demos

[n6]

can I make this in max? I would like to use the baking method for animations with moving objects...

best regards
themaxxer

there is limited support for animation within vrml, especially using the blaxxun vrml exporter
that said, only object transformations (move/rotate/scale) are supported in a useful way. though by principle you could deform objects, the file size tends to explode if you do it. (each vertex position of the object gets saved for each animation frame)

i really haven't looked into vrml lately but there are better realtime vizualisation systems out there.
those usually are external tools with their own authoring applications
some i know are:
quest3d
http://www.quest3d.com
royalty-free, needs some programming/developer skills

rtre
http://www.cubicspace.com

cult3d
http://www.cult3d.com
you need to purchase a license to publish the projcet

virtools
http://www.virtools.com

be warned, though, all of these more or less need a high level of knowledge about realtime 3d and tend to need programming skills to give the spectacular results seen in the demos

you are wrong regarding VRML capabilities.
You are right : it requires some knowleges about realtime 3D.

Also you must know that the reference you quote : blaxxun viewer and exporter are outdated and havent been updated since 5 years...

Bitmanagement.de owns now and update frequently the viewer and the max exporter.