Bake with "shoot rays from camera" artifacts

[rainingwaffles]

Texture Baking with "Shoot rays from camera" mode does a great job when viewed from the front, but somewhat as expected if falls apart when viewed from any other angle. Is there a way to have reflection a specular calculated with "shoot rays from camera" but to still calculate the diffuse by using the standard texture baking surface normal? And there are some other reflection artifacts on the edges; is it possible to fix those or to get the bake to fade out at certain angles?

It's fine that the reflection component is stationary on the objects from a single viewpoint, we just want the rest of the shading to be the standard diffuse. Are there other ways to approach this problem?

The workaround we're considering is exploring multiple bakes -- one from camera and one not from camera -- then combining in post as a comp. This would be slow but could function. Alternatively we could render spec as a camera projection and layer on top of the bake. Open to suggestions. Thanks,

Blake

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Alternatively we could render spec as a camera projection and layer on top of the bake.

This would be a good way to deal with this situation.

And there are some other reflection artifacts on the edges; is it possible to fix those or to get the bake to fade out at certain angles?

I'll make a note about the artifacts.

[moshev]

Hello,

Yes, you do need to do two bakes if you want diffuse and specular to be calculated differently. Doing it internally in V-Ray won't be significantly faster since it will still be two separate renders.

The artifacts you're seeing are from faces that are almost parallel to the camera. In the past we have attempted several approaches to smoothing them out, but did not find one that can work. In the end, these are not rendered wrong, it really is how the face looks like from the viewpoint of the camera. Also, the "wrong" effect is only apparent when looking at the entire image - you can't know on a per-ray basis if the end result will look "right".

You should try adding a subdivision modifier to get rid of any sharp creases and transitions between camera-facing and camera-hidden faces, and to avoid having large faces that are almost parallel to the camera.

[rainingwaffles]

Great, thanks!