Why do we bake?

[Jacki Silverfall]

What is the purpose of baking objects. What exactly does it do? Do you bake meshes like sculpts? Please help me understand this better,or point me to this info.

Thx, Jacki

[Nacy Nightfire]

Sculpt maps are images, so they are "baked"...and baked is different then rendered.  Render is when you process an  image (or a series of images for animation)  of the mesh scene and its lighting and other effects as final picture from the viewpoint you set the scene up to take a "snapshot" of.

When you bake a image/texture its meant to be applied to the UVs of a  mesh which may then be rendered for an video, for an advertisement, or brought into a game like SL for example.

What you are actually baking into the image can vary, but it can include lighting effects, ambient occlusion (sorta like a bit of grunge shadow in the cracks and crevices..anything that is adjacent to another part...looks like shading but isn't directional based on lighting), alphas, procedural textures you create in your 3d program (clouds, noise, etc.)  all combined/baked into a single image.  This is a great saving in 3D games since a very highly detailed texture effect can be applied on a low polygon model.

This is an advanced beginners take on the subject.  There are lots of folks here who can make corrections to my simplified explanation but it's a start.

[Madeliefste Oh]

When you bake, you always bake a texture, not the sculpty or the mesh it self. You can use a program like Photoshop to make textures for your sculpties or meshes, but you can also use tools that are in a 3D program to make textures for your sculpty or mesh.

For example the 'shadow maps' that many sculptymakers are selling together with their sculpts is a bake. It is a bake of the ambient occlusion (self shadowing of the sculpty) in the 3D program.

When you texture your model with help of the 3D program you can work in layers, you can compare it to Photoshop, where you can also work with layers. By putting layer over layer you create the texture for the model. The program it self can also create layers, like for example a layer for lightning, or a layer for reflection of the surrounding, a layer for transparency.

When you bake a texture for a mesh or sculpty you make a choice for the layers you need an put them all together in one picture. Like when you export a Photoshop file to a jpg or tga file, the picture will combine all and everything into a single layer that you can upload to SL.

 

 

[SaintDespair]

Why do we bake? Well, we can make lots of yummy things that way. Like cupcakes.

*queue song*

All you have to do is take a cup of flour,
Add it to the mix.
Now just take a little something sweet, not sour,
A bit of salt, just a pinch.
Baking these treats is such a cinch,
Add a teaspoon of vanilla,
Add a little more, and you count to four
And you never get your fill of...
Cupcakes - so sweet and tasty.
Cupcakes - don't be too hasty.
Cupcakes - cupcakes, cupcakes, CUPCAKES!

 

...oh, that's not what you're talking about, is it? Well I'm a bit lost when it comes to that type of baking. *walks away quietly*

[York Jessop]

Baking is something I just spent the last 2 days trying to understand too, in terms of actually doing it. After many many hours of fiddling with lighting, making lightmaps and all sorts of other technical hoo haa I finally understand how to do it! (go me)

The purpose of baking objects is to add shadows to textures, instead of using the viewer shadows (which requires alot of computer powah) it allows you to give objects or environments (like a room with furniture in it) a much more realistic appearance by having a fixed shadow on the floor under a piece of furniture or by making corners in a room alittle bit darker than say next to a window.

The great thing about meshes is that the 3D programs you use can do this automatically and give you a UVMap with these shadows already baked onto them, all you have to do from this point onwards is texture your UVMap.

Heres a very quick example of non baked vrs baked:

 

 

And heres one I refined to be better and more subtle

 

And this is exactly what the texture/image itself looks like:

[Nacy Nightfire]

"When you bake, you always bake a texture, not the sculpty or the mesh it self. "

Just so newcomers to these ideas aren't confused here.  Information about the sculpty form is baked into a RGB image which is basically map of the vertex positions in 3d space.  The form itself is a particular type of mesh, but the pertinant information is "baked" into that rainbow texture we all know  as a sculpty map  to be interpreted by SL on upload.

[Rage Riptide]

Baking as refered to inworld avatar means when you put on layers of clothing they are then baked together with the skin to form a single image instead of 10. They are all "baked" to the avatar mesh UV. Same for the above images. Colour, textures, lighting are baked to a single image. (or several), display or UV texture or what you choose.  Somthin like that anyway.