Render to Texture Gaming/Radiosity baking

[gaggle]

I'm not sure what you're asking, but checkout www.scriptspot.com for a script called, last time I checked, "bakersfield". It adds an imo nicer interface to the whole backing-textures thing.

Your approch to nice ambient lighting seems.. slightly off. Have you tried the Lightracer? (provided you're a MAX5 user), its default-settings with a simple Skylight added is usually enough to get you started in the right direction.. check it out in the helpfiles.

[oXYnary]

That rings a bell.. is lightracer the correct name? I cant find it in the help files. Is that a material setting, or under utilities?

Im going for a radiosity solution to get the correct lighting reflection all around the character (which I don't know if lightracer does this or not). Something I see alot of game artist do manually.. and it shows if you aren't looking at the character the way they intended.

I downloaded that script. Thanks for that link.

[gaggle]

I evidently made a small booboo, the correct term is "light tracer", with the two t's, and the space inbetween. Search for that, and hit up the 2nd item on the list. Now doesn't that woman just look plenty nice?

Searching on Radiosity, on the other hand, only yields pictures of a gallery with geometrical objects and busts on display, pff, not nearly as sexy :rolleyes:.


*cough*, ANYway, for characters and this sort of nice ambient lighting you're looking for it's my opinion you can kick the radiosity-solver out the door. That's much more suited for hallways and interiour of buildings and whatnot if you ask me. The light tracer gives immidiate easy-to-use results that you should be able to bake into your character without too much of a hassle.

[Ryno]

Here's my technique for texture baking. It can be done before texturing, to provide some base lighting to the texture, or after:

1. Create a ground plane or box below the model that you want to bake. This is important for the GI calculations.

2. Create Panel>Lights>Skylight, position the skylight anywhere in your scene. This light simulates atmospheric light when used in conjunction with Global Illumination. Default color is very light blue, adjust as necessary.

3. Rendering Menu>Advanced Lighting>Light Tracer This is the GI solution, and Radiosity is another option, but takes more fiddling.

4. Select the model to bake, Rendering Menu>Render To Texture

5. Turn Auto Unwrap off, if it is on, or it will disregard your UV assignments, and automatically unwrap your model again.

6. Add a Complete Map (or lighting map, or whatever you want), Set the Map Channel to 1 (assuming you used channel 1), set the size to 512x512, or whatever you want, give it an output path, click Render to perform the bake.

7. Now the weird thing is that by default, the new texture will be applied in a Shell Material to the object. Look this up if you want more info. There is an option to disable this in the Render to Texture dialog, or you can just re-create and re-apply a Standard Material with the new baked texture.

Notes: If you have overlapping UVs, you can have some problems, as the light on the different portions of the mesh cannot be calculated properly. RTT will render out the darkest portion, which may cause heavy shadowing. If you want to overlap UVs, I suggest that you shove the overlappers off to the side of your unwrap, then bake, then move them back to their overlapping positions.

[oXYnary]

Thanks both for the help. Im now on the right track. Hmm.. your from Seattle also Ryno. :)

[Ryno]

Yeah, I work at Microsoft Games, and teach Max classes down at Mesmer occasionally if you're curious.

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