I've been trying to get my head around the bake texture ROP for the past couple of days, and it's driving me crazy.

I feel like it is a mine field of things that could go wrong. I finally figured out that the “uv object” can either be your high rez geometry OR your low-rez geometry depending on if you have low rez geometry to project on… (i think?)

That is super confusing! there really really should just be one slot for hi-rez and one slot for low-rez.

I'm still not entirely sure what the cage geometry is supposed to be. Is it supposed to be the same topology as the hi rez or the low rez? or does it depend? how exactly are you supposed to create it? do you just scale it by 1.1 or something? Does it matter if it is penetrating your other geometry?



My other huge problem is that i have no idea how I can scope all of these attributes before wasting time baking folder after folder full of black or grey squares….

Is there something like the geometry spreadsheet where I can just see a bunch of numbers and make sure they aren't all zeros?

I'm assuming that the shader is appled to the object plays a large role in determining the output from this ROP. Is there a recommended shader for texture baking?


Can we maybe put together a hip file that is set up properly to bake out every single map that is available to bake, and then maybe stick it in as example on the help card?


I'm pretty sure I can't be the only one confused by this thing… help!!!!!

Cage mesh should have the same topology as the low-res mesh. Mantra's doc regarding it is admittedly a bit lacking… but if you google for texture baking and cage mesh, you'll find relevant information. (it's an optional input to avoid discontinuities in textures under certain situations)

I believe there is texture baking tutorial in the works that will be coming soon.

As for the attributes, I assume you mean the channels extracted under images->main tab? - as long as you use principled shader or classic shader (and the objects are of polygon or polysoup type), they will all work. Please note that if you build a custom material or layer principled/classic shaders, you may need to manually place bind exports for the channels you want to extract.

＾＾ yes, channels! that's what i meant. i think that was mostly my problem. I was using some other shaders, at first.


that might be a good place to put a little warning exclamation.. like if you have checked some boxes to create maps for channels that aren't being exported by your shader.

So, all of that got me almost everything, but I don't seem to be getting any displacement maps. Are there any specific gotCHAs to do with those? I'm not getting Ds,Vdt, or Vd…


I guess most people don't want to get Vd, but i've always been a bit strange. (heh heh heh)

Also, I was wondering if there is a place where I can see/read about all the possible channels that could ever be exported from a shader all in one place… (like also Cf, Of, or what have you?)


Thanks.

Displacement channels contains distance between low-res object and high-res object, so if the surfaces are coincident, or if you haven't assigned a high-res object, then it will output nothing. When outputting vector displacement channels(Vd), you may want to switch the “unwrap method” to “uv match” (under Unwrapping tab). Otherwise, the displacement direction will simply be surface normal of the low-res object.

You can add “Extra Image Plane” (under “Images”->“Main” tab in Bake Texture ROP, “Images”->“Extra Image Planes” tab in Mantra ROP) and use the “VEX Variable” dropdown menu to see some of the common exports. Please keep in mind that you can add any arbitrary channels and write arbitrary vex variables by adding your own exports to a shader.

Ok, I will give all that stuff a try. thanks. you definitely helped me get a better understanding of how this thing works.