[Bf-funboard] Texture baker

Paul Lunneberg bf-funboard@blender.org
Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:15:28 -0500


I would have to say that your description of texture baking is quite 
long.  To put it simply... Texture Baking takes all the layers of a 
complex texture/material and combines it into a single image that can be 
mapped onto an object to replace all the original complexity.  You would 
obviously have one for Dif, Norm, and so on... but it is mainly helpfull 
in games where you try to maximize the draw speed on everything.

I think a python script to bake the textures of an object or selected 
objects and output the resulting baked textures as jpgs, tga, pngs, 
whatever... would be a great tool.

I don't think it would be something that is very usefully for normal 
animation and rendering.  If your trying to preview motion for an 
animation, the texturing doesn't matter.  If your trying to preview a 
render... having a baked texture will only sortof give you an idea... 
you will still need to render with full textures over and over to get 
what you want.

As for the renders only taking a second or two... man you guys have some 
short render times.  I'm on a 2ghz machine with 1gig of ram and my 
renders can take well over 10 minutes with everything enabled!  But I'm 
usually working with a full environment made of objects and high poly 
animated characters.

Paul
paul@pablosbrain.com
www.pablosbrain.com
www.fwd-rev.com


trip wrote:
> I had a long talk with theeth about this and I still failed to show him 
> why I am serious about this. So maybe someone else.
> 
> A texture baker is a simple behind the scenes tool that just does it's 
> thing. The thing it does is show a preview of a texture shader on a 
> mesh. The preview does not take in radio or raytracing it just shows a 
> fast image in the 3d view. The current shader preview in the material 
> view window is just this, but it shows nothing of what will truly be on 
> a mesh at all until you try a pre render.
> 
> Now a pre-render is the best way to truly see this image effect on the 
> mesh, it is a boring waiting game. A typical pre-render without any 
> fancy lighting and OSA turned off at a basic size image that is easy to 
> see will take about a second or two per render depending on the size of 
> the mesh. To quote theeth "boohoo". Yes boohoo, but it is time and it is 
> time off of work towards the prefect texture. And this does not even 
> take into account an animation test. To add to this if you have to 
> constantly tweak the settings and continue pre-renders it will add up 
> time very very fast.
> 
> So the answer to this is how can we get the texture onto the mesh as an 
> image. In the 3d view with potato texture mode a mesh that is uv mapped 
> is viewable in realtime to rotate and transform the mesh however you 
> like and the speed is unbelievable in how fast it renders a mesh as it 
> is just realtime with a texture image applied to it.
> 
> I know of the ways to UV unwrap a mesh and render a texture then reapply 
> it to the mesh as a Uv texture. But this is a slow process and is in 
> contradiction to tweaking, each and every tweak will take time to render 
> and save and open.
> 
> Also there is the method of applying vertex colors, but this will take a 
> lot of mesh to show up the image at a reasonable detail to get anything 
> from it. While a uv map can be applied onto a low poly cube and still 
> have a great amount of detail to see.
> 
> So lets cut to the chase. Texture baking is needed badly. It will 
> increase shader preview speed. I have asked the python scripters a lot 
> for this but it seems no one can figure it out yet, though I would think 
> it could be a better item in python script. Though C is faster.
> 
> It would also be great for the GameEngine. Anyone hate the idea of 
> making Blender faster?
> 
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