ExtraTex for Render to Texture

[Ihno]

Since everything is "PBS" now we don't need to bake highlights and reflectons into our diffuse maps.
Instead we need to get the maps which we plug in the vray mtl.
Unfortunately the rightklick on Map->Render Map... feature does not render things like the distance tex.
I think that is something you couldn't do anything about, because the Material Editor doesn't care about the geometry.

So it would be great to have an ExtraTex Element in the Render to Texture dialog.

[Fragster]

Same issue here. Would be great to somehow get distance tex to be rendered to map.

[Ihno]

There is a workaround:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...render+texture

Would like to have this anyway.

[Ihno]

Any official response?

Texture baking is a pain right now. Have to plug every single map one by one in the selfillum slot of a Vray Material, turn off exposure and color mapping, apply the Mateial to the object, choose a filename and push bake.
And if something changes I have to redo all of it.

Please do something about it.
We really shouldn't need to change the rendersettings for the scene or the materials of the objects.

With ExtraTex the baking would take longer than now because the material would be rendered with reflection and stuff unless we turn it of. Also we would have to change all the filenames for every object.
But we could bake all maps for one object at once.

In a perfect world I need to set it up once and than just have a button per map or object to re-render and override the bitmap files.

How about a cache map node instead of the render to texture ExtraTex?
-Button to choose file format and disk folder. Maybe two of them, like the seperate render channels option in the render settings. One to seperatly save jpg's, tga's and stuff for use in other engines. While the map saves a tiled exr by default for the map-tree/materal behind the chache node.
-Two spinners for the resolution.
-Button or list to choose a reference geometry object for the geometry dependent stuff. List would mean it needs to output a texture file for every object on that list.
-Spinner to choose the map-channel of the reference geometry and the map channel the cached map will use.
-Bypass checkbox if one won't want to use the saved Bitmap in the material, could be usefull while tweaking the material.
-Bake button.

You would kill two birds with one stone. Make game artists happy, like me and give an easy to use and quick way to speedup renderings with complex map setups.
The only drawback would be view dependent stuff like fresnel but we would still be able to put them behind the cached map.