I have no idea what is the ideal workflow and what features are needed, so I need some help:
- is “Element background” color necessary?
- what types of output are required?
- is “projection mapping” necessary? If so, how is it used?
For the outputs: normal map and AO, material/color ID is a must for an external texturing app; gloss and bump would be also nice (when baked object is pre-textured).
Projection mapping is a must for texture baking. Without it, baking is pretty much useless.
p.s. looks like first quarter of this year can be terrific for Corona!
ok, so… what does it do? Do you have any resources on it for somebody who never used it?
Projection mapping allows to bake maps from another model. Usuall scenario is baking from high poly model onto low poly model. Mostly it’s used to bake normal maps, AO, displacement and diffuse maps. I’ll try to search for some user friendly resources on projection mapping later.
I think this is a typical use:
Though I have never used it…
It’s also used to translate one set of textures baked into one UV set to a second and different UV Set without having to “re-paint” the texture, it’s really useful.
Cheers.
You’re talking about projection modifier, but that has little to do with Corona.
From back then when I was baking at work I remember that having these channels was very useful for realtime etc:
- complete map
- diffuse
- direct light
- shadow
- AO
- object ID didn’t play a role for us but would be important
Now since direct shading and shadows aren’t easily separated in Corona this might be impossible.
Another useful idea would be to map any material property (let’say IOR value or glossiness values) to a grayscale value, at least I’d know why it would be useful to me.
We only had limited usage of baking and it’s really long ago, so keep in mind my knowledge is basic.
Nope, I’m talking about having a diffuse map with one type of UV in channel 1, and inthe same geometry, in channel 2 having the new UV layout made by the modeler, now think that you have all the character with all the textures ready, but all the UV layout has changed, you have two options, or you work again in the textures to adapt them to the new UV Layout or you project Channel 1 texture in Channel 2 UV Layout, and you have the new texture perfectly baked and ready to be used, and this applies for a variety of things you can do at the same time, like extracting different maps or whatever other thing.
You can do this with scanline (as long as scanline stays alive), but it’s sampling technology it’s not good at all, and if you have an specific material like the Corona material you won’t be able to do it, so you have to convert all the materials, make the texture reprojection from Ch1 to Ch2 and reapply oyour materials again, so having this inside corona is good, you save a lot of time.
Cheers!
Yeah sorry, i misunderstood you. I thought you’re talking about UV coordinates projection.
No prob 
HI everyone one
my contribution for the baking comprehension.
I put the houdini maters class in firt because it much technical
for the rest sorry if it look like too much modo fan but if you go to the foundry vimeo channel, it’s an amount of phenomenal videos, tutorial coures etc
Houdini MasterClass (more technical)
Mantra Rendering and Texture Baking ( second part of the video min 50 )
Progressive baking
Texture baking parts
Baking UI kit (interface)
Baking improvment
3Dsmax baking, an very old one but demonstrate the texture baking in max
Findaly! This is an amazing news to me. Im all in to this!
im also very interested in this topic
Looks great, congrats!
I could imagine that overriding the background for certain types could be useful (for example, the background in the AO map could be white since black means occlusion).
I don’t think that background override matters, unless one use 0 px edge bleeding and saves into jpeg with crappy compression.
Not that it’s super important but it could be useful when you need to clone stamp in PS. You know, small details that make life easier in the end.
I think it’s generally useful to use the same black/white values that are used within the map/channel type. Same would apply to glossiness where black means 0 glossiness but a user would start with a white color if he’d paint the map.