Wouldnt it be great, if vray for 3dsmax has a one quick button
to create UV lightmaps inside 3Dsmax, which you then can use to bake the VRAY GI maps.
Like Unity has one button for creating UV light maps.
Wich are then used be enlighten too calculate the GI solution one time only for static models.
that would be a great speedup for rendering walktroughs, and it would be awesome
if you can then take those maps to example unity. and skip Enlighten.
And for the unity workflow.
I rather do it with vray then in unity, because i can get faster feedback in 3dsmax with vray.
then waiting for enlighten too make a solution which is crap and then redo numerous itterations in unity.
for example i could make my lighting setup first in 3dsmax/vray render previews as usual and when content.
push a vray button too generate uv lightmaps, give vray some baking time. and voila you have a static GI model.
would it work?, or is my reasoning flawed.?
what are your opinions?
yes, but in unity the workflow is too a point faster.
you can just check generate uv lightmaps on the whole model, and it will unwrap for you.
not per object like in the render too texture scenario in 3Dsmax
and when it generates the Gi solution it creates raw lighting maps.. i think. because afterwards you can still change the diffuse materials.
havent really messed with render too texture, but from what i have seen its a slower workflow.
thanks for your response
I checked Redshift 2.0 and they have a option too bake, yet not for 3dsmax.
still i think it would be a nice addition too vray arsenal of tools.
And would be awesome if the feature is similiar as in unity/enlighten that it
makes its own atlas and uwv unwrap.
Executing baking in Maya:
To execute baking in Maya, through the Redshift menu select Redshift->Baking->Bake…
From there you can select to bake all objects or just the current selection.
You can also bake all objects in the scene (if you unselect the “Skip objects not assigned to a Redshift bake set” option)
using a default set of values.
I’m not sure what’s your point? For V-Ray for Maya, texture baking can be performed by going to Lighting/Rendering > Bake with V-Ray… menu. You can also attach V-Ray bake properties to objects in the scene to specify resolution etc. More information can be found here: Chaos Docs
well my point was.
a quick and easy way too bake the GI result making rendering even faster
or too export the GI result for game engines like unity.
i know 3dsmax has a render to texture feature.
But my point is more like what flat iron does,
or unity/enlighten, which can unwraps, makes atlas and bakes automaticly.
render too texture in 3dsmax for a complex scene is a bit off work setting up.
And it would be a great time saver, as well in workflow as in rendering
Similar to flatiron - I use a script that does a very basic flatten/unwrap on all geometry - and then use UVPacker (made by the guys who made Flatiron) to pack the UV’s better. This has worked really well for me. I’m looking for more projects that I run through my process and make public. Most of my work has had to stay private. I’m looking for other folks projects to test with my workflow and publicly share if possible…
I’ve only used this workflow to bake the complete texture - but it should work with the other passes. I try to keep away from doing too much work in Unity besides tweaking metal materials and reflections since many of the projects I do run through this process are still in flux
Will be updating with a new workflow post soon enough - I’ve got some more scripts being worked on to help in organizing materials (so you don’t have to bake glass/mtl objects), as well as separating geometry at the end for better reflection handling in Unity.
But you’re right, it’s not a one click solution which I think is fine right now. Everyone will have a different process for how they want to go about doing things.
seems still a bit extensive.
especially in this ever demanding fast line of work.
But maybe there are no shortcuts in the workflow.
will have a go at your tutorial. thks
ps: may i also point out, that in unity you can check generate uv lightmaps.
and it does the unwrapping and baking in a couple of clicks.
yet your stuck with the enlighten solution of the bake.
Yes I’ve tried using the ‘generate UV lightmaps’ - probably depends on the project and amount of geometry. But I haven’t had much luck with it or with Unity’s built in GI renderer. Just takes forever with crap results. I much prefer watching the renders with vray and being able to even test pieces as the maps finish, than waiting for the whole thing.
yas! Especially if there were specific render to texture ‘texture elements’ that could relate more to maps needed for game shaders. like a reflection map wouldn’t be a bake of what is seen in the reflection, but the texture being used for reflections. There’s be a diffuse, gi, shadows, gi+shadows, reflection, bump, roughness, etc. Bonus points if they could be combined the way some Unity textures need to be where the alpha does one thing and the rbg another.
I’d do it by hand, but when you start to work with baking 100 objects - you don’t want to spend a lot of time on each shader unless the 3d model was 100% complete. Which is never the case. Hence doing 1 or 2k complete maps of everything has been working for me almost all the time - especially to quickly get into the space in VR and size up things before changes happen.
Speeding up the texture rendering would be also very cool. It allways renders the complete map.
I think it could be smarter.
For example; if you want to render the GI you’ll have to render the reflections if you want to have GI caustics.
Would be cool if it could just render what you really need for the selected elements.
A render to Texture version of the denoiser would also be very nice, although it works quite well with the standalone version.
@Morne Not really, I did have friends make me custom max scripts over the years to help automate some of the workflow which I think I had posted on my blog. Having all the scene materials organized and named well helps, then I combine all geometry in the entire scene, explode it by material, and unwrap and back the UV. Or if the entire scene is a grey material then I’ll start separating parts, keeping larger surfaces to have their own UV. Then bake the complete map. For reflective objects I had another script that helped me re-break up objects and retain the main name of the object (metal, metal01, metal02, etc). I think the most recent project I did this was for a study of two options of entry stairs. Someone also made me a Unity script to assign objects to flip between. So I’d bake out two options and be able to flip between them pressing a button on the keyboard. But yeah. Lots of prep work although if you have the render power you do get to sit back and let it render…
I’ve stopped messing with VR until Oculus Quest is released - although not sure how many 4k textures I can pack into a scene being loaded onto mobile hardware.