Blender: Texture Baking

[Devriv]

Hello everyone. I need some help learning to bake a texture in Blender. As a test model, I expand a simple cube into a wall, and want to texture one face with a bricks texture. I assign a base material to the entire wall and a different material to the face I wish to texture. I have a diffuse and a normal, both of which came in one package when purchased. Everything up to (and seemingly) including baking, goes quite smoothly, without any error messages. Yet, every time I bake them, the baked image looks exactly like the original bricks image, without any influence from the Normal! I've checked and re-checked everything but I think I must be neglecting some setting. I would appreciate your help.

[Coby Foden]

You might find helpful information in this tutorial:

Normal Map Baking in Blender 2.5*

[Devriv]

Thank you for the suggestion Coby. The tutorial, although instructive, pertains to baking a normal map, whereas I already have the normal map. As each face can only have one texture assigned to it, I need to bake a combination of the normal and the diffuse into a single image which I can then put on the wall face. I think it's just a setting I'm being unmindful of. I'll find it eventually, Haha! I've made a copy of the tutorial nevertheless, as I may need it at some other time

[Nacy Nightfire]

Correction here.  Each face can have only one MATERIAL assigned to it.  However that material can have a number of textures linked to it which interact and blend in interesting ways.  So you can absolutely add the normal map to a texture slot and set it to up to effect normals and not diffuse color and at the same time add a texture to the stack which effects diffuse, color or a number of other options.  You should be able to see from that video how to adjust settings for the normal map.  And just google or search Utube for tutorials for setting up a texture  to effect diffuse color.

[Drongle McMahon]

"I think it's just a setting..."

Bake section of Render tab of Properties edit window; Bake Mode -> Full Render ?

[Chic Aeon]

I would LOVE to know that Full Render works for some folks. For me, the ambient and shadow bakes are fine (haven't used others) but when I try a full render I immediately get an error message -- I think it is "feeback loop". If there  is a way to actually GET a full render to work I would love to know.

Well of COURSE I WOULD!!!!! LOL

[Drongle McMahon]

I think it is "feeback loop"

It works for me. I can only guess you are using the same image as input to the material as for the baked output. The output needs to go to a new image ???

[Devriv]

Drongle, thank you, yes the Full Render works Why do you think that the texture bake mode is not working? Was I not supposed to choose that mode over Full Render? Shouldn't I be choosing Texture under the Bake Mode if I want a just the texture, and wish to avoid shadows and the lighting?

[Drongle McMahon]

I guess setting it to texture means it just bakes the diffuse texture, ignoring all lighting effects. The normal map is just a lighting effect. So that would be ignored too. Baking just the texture can give a different output if different UV maps are used for the input mapping and the bake, but if they are the same, then I imagine it's just going to fill in the mapped parts of the image with unchanged texture. If it's a wall filling the whole UV space, that would just replicate texture, wouldn't it?. I don't do much of this stuff, so a more authoratative explanation from someone else would be useful.

[Devriv]

Thank you so much for the explanation Drongle. 

 

"The normal map is just a lighting effect. So that would be ignored too."

 

I wish I had known.

[Chic Aeon]

OK. Will give that a try. Sure that I have the same texture that I had associated with the material so that would have been true. Who knew? .

 

Thanks again. Keeping fingers crossed. Done for the day. Will try tomorrow.

[Mikki Miles]

earlier versions of Blender apparently ignored that feedback loop. With the recent versions you have to set a different backing destination, took me a while to get that straight, but now it works fine