Where are we with texture baking for v3?

[dotcommer]

Starting to work on VR environments, and for the game engines I need to bake out my textures. Last I heard, we just had diffuse texture baking in v3. Do we have any more? Like normals, reflections, AO, etc? Thanks! Also, if there are any video tutorials and getting the texture baking process to work in C4D anyone can point me to, that'd be great. Does inlifethrill have any new video tutorials for V3?

Thanks!

[mojave]

Last I heard, we just had diffuse texture baking in v3. Do we have any more? Like normals, reflections, AO, etc?

Please refer to the original source of information about texture baking.

Octane's baking camera allows you baking any render layer as you would do with a regular camera.

Also any material can be potentially baked, you just need to take into account that some artifacts such as reflections or Fresnel edges which are position-dependent need to be baked from a given position (see "Baking position") and even though you'll get a 100% surface coverage its correctness applies just to that position and the visible hemisphere.

[dotcommer]

Awesome! This is great news for game design workflow. The instructions for creating the bake camera are a little confusing though (none of the images show up in the post). Are there any C4D focused tutorials using Octane v3's new texture baking system? Anything from Inlifethrill or something like that?

My only confusion is how multiple objects are handled and what role the "baking" camera has in this process:
If I have a large scene with many objects that I need to create one large texture for, what should I do to ensure I bake out a diffuse and reflection textures from all of the objects as though it was one large mesh? Can I group all objects in the scene and add the baking camera? I understand the issues with reflections as they're position dependent.

[aoktar]

viewtopic.php?f=87&t=54323

[mojave]

Wow! that's a lot of questions Let me try answering one at a time:

The instructions for creating the bake camera are a little confusing though (none of the images show up in the post).

I'll check why you cannot see those images as you should, however you may find the same information in the documentation pages so that might help.

Are there any C4D focused tutorials using Octane v3's new texture baking system? Anything from Inlifethrill or something like that?

aoktar's link above might have answer this one already.

My only confusion is how multiple objects are handled and what role the "baking" camera has in this process:
If I have a large scene with many objects that I need to create one large texture for, what should I do to ensure I bake out a diffuse and reflection textures from all of the objects as though it was one large mesh?

In order to do this, there are two things you need to take into account:

1. First, you need to setup your UVs in such a way that different objects do not overlap in UV space.
2. Your scene needs to be setup in such a way that all those objects belong to the same baking group ID (which is part of the object layer/object layer map) and that same ID is the selected in your baking camera's configuration.

Can I group all objects in the scene and add the baking camera?

I am not sure if I've answered this one already with my previous answer.

[dotcommer]

Ok, I'm trying to follow Ahmet's screenshot for baking multiple objects. Here's what I'm thinking I should do, correct me if I'm wrong:

Model and texture my environment as usual with octane shaders.
Group all objects in scene into one group layer
Apply an Octane Object tag to group
Add an Octane camera, set it to "baking" for camera type and make sure its bake id matches the object tag of the group
Set render kernel to use the "baking" camera (and I guess also set the dimensions of the render, which would mean the size of the texture map?)
Refresh the octane preview and hopefully see the textures start rendering? I'm not clear on this part. Am I able to set the texture size, and types of textures like AO and reflections somewhere?

In a game engine like Unity, I should be able to drop in my scene that I converted into a single mesh and apply the baked texture from Octane and everything should look similar to how it would have been rendered within Octane, right?

I know these are a lot of questions, but I feel like I'm really close to figuring this out and if I can get a good understanding of this, I can do a video tutorial on this and help a LOT of people out who are building game environments for VR and other applications.

[aoktar]

Ok, I'm trying to follow Ahmet's screenshot for baking multiple objects. Here's what I'm thinking I should do, correct me if I'm wrong:

Model and texture my environment as usual with octane shaders.
Group all objects in scene into one group layer
Apply an Octane Object tag to group
Add an Octane camera, set it to "baking" for camera type and make sure its bake id matches the object tag of the group
Set render kernel to use the "baking" camera (and I guess also set the dimensions of the render, which would mean the size of the texture map?)
Refresh the octane preview and hopefully see the textures start rendering? I'm not clear on this part. Am I able to set the texture size, and types of textures like AO and reflections somewhere?

In a game engine like Unity, I should be able to drop in my scene that I converted into a single mesh and apply the baked texture from Octane and everything should look similar to how it would have been rendered within Octane, right?

I know these are a lot of questions, but I feel like I'm really close to figuring this out and if I can get a good understanding of this, I can do a video tutorial on this and help a LOT of people out who are building game environments for VR and other applications.

You can use renderpasses for extracting AO/diffuse/etc.. Nothing different than rendering a frame with thinlens camera. But only one bake-group is possible at one time. At this point you can write a script to do automatized way for different group's rendering. Or just make keyframes on bake-group number on cameratag and render a sequence.

[dotcommer]

This is what confuses me, the bake groups. Wouldn't I only need one bake group applied to one group of objects to get a single baked texture of all those objects? At least, that is what i'm trying to do.

[mojave]

This is what confuses me, the bake groups. Wouldn't I only need one bake group applied to one group of objects to get a single baked texture of all those objects? At least, that is what i'm trying to do.

Yes, you are right, just one baking group should be enough as long as your object UVs are configured in such a way that the do not overlap. Then you can bake as many render layers as you wish for the same render target.

[dotcommer]

This is what confuses me, the bake groups. Wouldn't I only need one bake group applied to one group of objects to get a single baked texture of all those objects? At least, that is what i'm trying to do.

Yes, you are right, just one baking group should be enough as long as your object UVs are configured in such a way that the do not overlap. Then you can bake as many render layers as you wish for the same render target.

I see. So there is no way currently for Octane to just align the UVs similar to how C4D's bake object function will just align all UVs in a group onto a single UV.