[Bf-funboard] Texture baker

[trip]

> 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.

True test renders will still need to be made but far less tests to see 
a basic outlay of what the image will look like on the model. My 
understanding is, you can UV map textures on a mesh and see what it 
looks like and this is taken for granted, but textures are absent in 
this detail and is needed to get an even better idea of the image. Plus 
colors look better than drab grey or one flat color.

> 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.
Eek! Yeah I can get there to but trying to test out a one minute 
animation would take 720 frames at 12/fps which = 1440 seconds, egh I 
do not have the patience for that if it is just a test !

Well until a coder sees this as something useful I don't think we'll 
see it, same goes for normal mapping. The code is there but no coder 
sees it as useful I guess. Prove me wrong ! :D



>
> 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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