Return Baking¶

Baking, in general, is the act of pre-computing something in order to speed up some other procedure later downwardly the line. Rendering from scratch takes a lot of time depending on the options you cull. Therefore, Blender allows you to "bake" some parts of the return ahead of time, for select objects. So, when you lot press Render, the entire scene is rendered much faster, since the colors of those objects practice not take to be recomputed.

Render blistering creates 2nd bitmap images of a mesh object'southward rendered surface. These images tin be re-mapped onto the object using the object'due south UV coordinates. Baking is washed for each private mesh, and can only be washed if that mesh has been UV-unwrapped. While it takes fourth dimension to set up up and perform, it saves render time. If y'all are rendering a long animation, the time spent baking can exist much less than fourth dimension spent rendering out each frame of a long blitheness.

Use Render Bake in intensive calorie-free/shadow solutions, such as AO or soft shadows from area lights. If you lot broil AO for the main objects, you will not have to enable it for the full render, saving return fourth dimension.

Use Total Render or Textures to create an image texture; baked procedural textures tin be used as a starting point for further texture painting. Employ Normals to make a low resolution mesh await like a high resolution mesh. To do that, UV unwrap a loftier resolution, finely sculpted mesh and broil its normals. Salvage that normal map, and Mapping (texture settings) the UV of a similarly unwrapped low resolution mesh. The low resolution mesh will expect simply like the high resolution, but volition have much fewer faces/polygons.

Advantages

  • Can significantly reduce render times.
  • Texture painting made easier.
  • Reduced polygon count.
  • Repeated renders are made faster, multiplying the time savings.

Disadvantages

  • Object must exist UV-unwrapped.
  • If shadows are baked, lights and object cannot move with respect to each other.
  • Large textures (e.g. 4096×4096) can exist memory intensive, and be only as irksome every bit the rendered solution.
  • Human (labor) fourth dimension must be spent unwrapping and baking and saving files and applying the textures to a channel.

Options¶

Bake Fashion¶

Full Render¶

Bakes all materials, textures, and lighting except specularity and SSS.

Ambient Apoplexy¶

Bakes ambient apoplexy every bit specified in the World panels. Ignores all lights in the scene.

../../_images/render_blender-render_bake_ambient-occlusion.png

Ambience Apoplexy.

Normalized
Normalize without using material'due south settings.

Shadow¶

Bakes shadows and lighting.

Normals¶

Bakes tangent and camera-space normals (among many others) to an RGB image.

../../_images/render_blender-render_bake_normals.png

Normals.

Normal Space

Normals tin can be baked in different spaces:

Camera space
Default method.
Earth space
Normals in globe coordinates, dependent on object transformation and deformation.
Object space
Normals in object coordinates, independent of object transformation, but dependent on deformation.
Tangent space
Normals in tangent space coordinates, independent of object transformation and deformation. This is the new default, and the right selection in most cases, since then the normal map can be used for animated objects too.

For materials the aforementioned spaces can be chosen besides, in the image texture options, side by side to the existing Normal Map setting. For correct results, the setting here should friction match the setting used for blistering.

Textures¶

Bakes colors of materials and textures just, without shading.

Deportation¶

Similar to baking normal maps, displacement maps can also be baked from a high-res object to an unwrapped depression-res object, using the Selected to Active option.

../../_images/render_blender-render_bake_displacement.png

Displacement.

Normalized
Normalize to the distance.

When using this in conjunction with a Subdivision Surface and Deportation modifiers within Blender, it is necessary to temporarily add a heavy Subdivision Surface Modifier to the 'low-res' model before baking. This means that if you then use a Displacement Modifier on top of the Subdivision Surface, the displacement will exist correct, since information technology is stored as a relative difference to the subdivided geometry, rather than the original base mesh (which can get distorted significantly past a Subdivision Surface). The higher the render subdivision level while baking, the more authentic the displacements will be. This technique may likewise be useful when saving the deportation map out for use in external renderers.

Emission¶

Bakes Emit, or the Glow color of a material.

Alpha¶

Bakes Blastoff values, or transparency of a material.

Mirror Colour and Intensity¶

Bakes Mirror color or intensity values.

Specular Color and Intensity¶

Bakes specular color or specular intensity values.

../../_images/render_blender-render_bake_full-render.png

Full return.

Additional Options¶

Articulate
If selected, clears the image to selected background color (default is black) before baking return.
Margin
Baked result is extended this many pixels across the edge of each UV "island", to soften seams in the texture.
Split
Stock-still
Slit quads predictably (0, 1, 2) (0, 2, 3).
Fixed Alternate
Slit quads predictably (1, 2, iii) (one, 3, 0).
Automatic
Split quads to requite the least distortion while blistering.
Select to Agile

Enable data from other objects to be baked onto the active object.

Altitude
Controls how far a point on another object can be away from the point on the agile object. Merely needed for Selected to Active. A typical employ case is to make a detailed, loftier-poly object, and so bake its normals onto an object with a low polygon count. The resulting normal map can then be applied to make the low-poly object look more detailed.
Bias
Bias towards further away from the object (in Blender units).

Notation

Mesh Must be Visible in Render

If a mesh is not visible in regular return, for case considering it is disabled for rendering in the Outliner or has the DupliVerts setting enabled, it cannot exist baked to.

Workflow¶

  1. In a 3D View editor, select a mesh and enter UV/Face Select mode.
  2. Unwrap the mesh object.
  3. In a UV/Image Editor, either create a new image or open up an existing one. If your 3D View is in textured display mode, you should now see the image mapped to your mesh. Ensure that all faces are selected.
  4. In the Bake panel at the bottom of the Render menu, bake your desired type of image (Total Render, etc.).
  5. When rendering is complete, Blender replaces the image with the Baked epitome.
  6. Save the image.
  7. Apply the prototype to the mesh as a UV texture. For displacement and normal maps, refer to Crash-land and Normal Maps. For full and texture bakes, refer to Textures.
  8. Refine the paradigm using the process described below, or embellish with Texture Paint or an external image editor.