"flattening" or baking HDRI onto car?

[Darlene_O]

I am looking for suggestions on if there is a way to "flatten" a 3DS Max/Vray file, as you can do with a Photoshop PSD. I have read that I can't bake reflections, but thought I'd ask if there were any other work arounds. My goal is to not give the client my custom made HDRs and lighting. Any thoughts? (btw, I am a total noob to baking anything, so if you have a suggestion, you'll have to describe it to me as if I'm a beginner on the subject)

Thanks!

[joconnell]

You've no real choice - you can only export models and setups. Reflections indeed can't really be baked since they're specific to the direction you're looking from it's the same with a lot of other car materials. You can back colour and shadows really, all the rest is view dependant. The o0ther assets are dependant on the contract you've agreed - generally models and scenes aren't included in the final deliverables, only images or animation. They'd have to have a copy of vray and all the other plugins you've used to render it, and likewise if you've bought any commercial textures or hdri files for example, you don't have a license to give those away.

If your client wants your scene files so they can try and make changes for themselves or try and get someone else to do revisions cheaper, then give it to them - they probably aren't the type of clients you want anyway.

[Darlene_O]

Hi,
Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. Time to start buying commercial HDRs and textures so that I can use that as an excuse not to give over that part of the source files! And yeah, I agree, the final deliverable should be the final images and that's it. Time to redo some contracts!

[super gnu]

who is to say the files you are using now are not "commercial" ones with restrictive licenses eh?

[Darlene_O]

Oh yes!