Patch Images in Baked Surfaces?

[Rodney]

I'm trying to refine my workflow a little and am curious...

 

Can we bake Patch Images into the images that result from Baking Surfaces?

 

As far as I can tell they aren't considered part of the surface that gets baked.

As they are defined by the patches themselves they'd be especially useful in defining regions for decal images created by the bake.

So I'm curious to know know if they actually can or cannot be included in the bake.

I'm not seeing a way to accomplish that here.

 

As a workaround there is always the tried and true methodology of a simple screen capture and decal placement.

Having patch images in the bake would skip those manual steps for patch images and result in more precise placement.

This would ensure each Patch Image is matched to its corresponding patch in 3D space and that relationship recorded on a 2D plane. The latter of which I assume is the whole point of Surface Baking.

[robcat2075]

I'm trying to refine my workflow a little and am curious...

 

Can we bake Patch Images into the images that result from Baking Surfaces?

 

It seems not to work. That might be AMReport material

[Rodney]

It seems not to work. That might be AMReport material

 

I'll do that. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

Edit: Done!

[John Bigboote]

Maybe something that fell-thru the cracks... good catch!

[Rodney]

Maybe something that fell-thru the cracks... good catch!

 

I'd say that we are just on the route to the implementation of that.

If you consider that we haven't had Surface Baking for that long and the steady improvements we've seen in that, it makes sense to keep moving along the hierarchical chain to the actual images and colors of each patch. Of all of the surface attributes we can assign to a surface in A:M the attributes assigned to Named Groups are the most important throughout.

 

Patch Images are extremely powerful and IMO they often better than materials and decals.

But they aren't simply images on patches. They can be percentages of Color, Displacement, Bump, Transparent Ambiance (as well as others). And all of these can can be Layered on top of each other.

 

Knowing a little of all the variables involved convinces me that there is a lot of work involved in keeping track of and programming enhancements to that.

Add to that a changing world where we expect to be able to directly paint on surfaces and things get even more complex.

 

I didn't post just to say all of the above but rather to suggest there is something of a mid-way method that can get some of my general nonsense accomplished.

The following might work well for someone that just wants to reproduce each group in the image resulting from baking a surface.

 

- Create a Material that is of a generic color or transparent.

- Drop an instance of the material on each Group you want to show up in the Decal

- Bake Surface

- Save Decal

- Adjust in Decal View / UV Editor and Associated Graphics Package

 

Note: If you like what you see in the Surface Baked Decal you can then go in and further enhance the Material.

This is imporant because Baked Surface Materials maintain their color, specular intensity, etc. (See image)

Once satified just Bake Surface again with the new material changes.

 

Disclaimer: This workflow is extremely experimental (for me).

[John Bigboote]

With more people using exporters like the improved OBJ exporter, it is very convenient to bake all your surface attributes before you export... makes for a much simpler OBJ file. DON'T FORGET, once you have baked- you will need to SAVE the generated imagery where you want it- AND you will want to DELETE any decals, groups, patch-images or other 'superfluos' or 'redundant' elements.

[Fuchur]

hi dont forget about the shiftkey (or was it the ctrl-key?) when klicking on bake surface...

 

see u

*fuchur*

[John Bigboote]

hi dont forget about the shiftkey (or was it the ctrl-key?) when klicking on bake surface...

 

see u

*fuchur*

 

 

 

YEAH---that...what does that allow for- making higher resolution maps?

[Rodney]

Yes, it's Shift + Bake Surface.

 

It lets us specify Higher Rez maps and you can tell A:M to overwrite previous decals.

That and we can specify the overlap/margins of the generated image. (See dialogue box)

 

- Rodney (Shift) Baker

 

 

Added: I'll say this too. BEFORE YOU DELETE all those extraneous elements make sure you save your file somewhere. This will be useful if you ever have to go back to the original and bake everything again.

[robcat2075]

I'll note that you can put a value smaller than 1.0 in the resolution slot to get smaller maps if you need them.

 

I haven't quite figured out what the res number means for the res you get. It seems to vary depending on the model.

[Gerry]

Sounds like it's time I learned something about baking. Never messed with it, but it sounds handy.

[pixelplucker]

Any way of baking a texture so it is square and maybe the power of 2?

[robcat2075]

Any way of baking a texture so it is square and maybe the power of 2?

 

It is possible to resize and even re-proportion textures. That did work for me on an OBJ that I was uploading to p3d.in

 

The baked map was rectangular. I resized it to a square in Photoshop (p3d.in requires a square of 1024x1024 or less) and it seemed to be applied appropriately.

[John Bigboote]

I just noticed that in our latest release (v17.0a SSE4) that this is still an issue... and that my patch images were not included in the bake process, I ran to the forum and did a 'bake surface' search and found this thread.

[Rodney]

I think... I forgot to post the report to A:M Reports.