Batch Bake (Mental Ray) issues

#1

Hello everyone.

I’m trying to do some batch baking on my scene in maya but I’m having a little trouble and hopefully some of you could help me. In my scene there are some trees that are actually tree models and a lot of flat panels with tree images on it.

When I render the scene the shadows look all fine but when I batch bake them only the real tree shadows are baked leaving the panes out. To be more detailed, some of the panels (very few of them) emit shadows on the baking process but not all of them, specially the ones I really need shadow from.

https://postimg.org/image/6eyr0btyv/
https://postimg.org/image/u4jlba2yf/

Does anyone know why is that happening?

Thanks

F

#2

this is a shot in the dark but check your normal direction. batch baking might not like normals facing away from the light source which could lead to those planes being excluded from the bake.