The Baking camera type renders lighting, texture, and material data directly into texture maps. The Texture BakingA process in which scene lighting is "baked" into a texture map based on an object's UV texture coordinates. The resulting texture can then be mapped back onto the surface to create realistic lighting in a real-time rendering environment. This technique is frequently used in game engines and virtual reality for creating realistic environments with minimal rendering overhead. system extracts lighting information from a mesh’s surface by using its UV map to generate a texture that can map back to the mesh at a later time. In OctaneRender®, texture baking is implemented as a special type of camera that, in contrast to the Thin Lens and Panoramic cameras, has one position and direction per sample. The way these are calculated depends on the input UV geometry and the actual geometry being baked.
For each sample, the camera calculates the geometry position and normal, then it generates a ray that points towards it using the same direction as the normal, from a distance of the configured kernel’s ray epsilon. Once calculated, OctaneRender® traces the ray in the same way as other camera types. In order to use a mesh for texture baking, the mesh should contain at least one UV set. In the case of AlembicAn open format used to bake animated scenes for easy transfer between digital content creation tools., you can use up to three sets. You should not map different geometry primitives to the same UV region - otherwise, you may find artifacts due to overlapping geometry.
Figure 1: The parameters of the Baking camera in the Node Inspector
Baking Camera Parameters
Baking Group ID - Specifies the group ID to bake. By default, all objects belong to the default baking group number 1.
UV Set - This determines the UV coordinates to use for baking.
Revert Baking - Flips the camera directions.
Padding
Size - The number of pixels added to the UV map edges. The padding size is specified in pixels. The default padding size is set to 4 pixels, with 0 being the minimum and 16 being the maximum size.
Edge Noise Tolerance - Specifies the tolerance for keeping or discarding edge noise.
Minimum - The coordinates in UV space for the origin of the bounding region for baking.
Size - This is the size in UV space of the bounding region for baking.
Use Baking Position - Traces camera rays from the specified coordinates in world space instead of using the mesh surface as reference. This is useful when baking within position-dependent artifacts such as the ones produced by GlossyThe measure of how well light is reflected from a surface in the specular direction, the amount and way in which the light is spread around the specular direction, and the change in specular reflection as the specular angle changes. Used for shiny materials such as plastics or metals. or SpecularAmount of specular reflection, or the mirror-like reflection of light photons at the same angle. Used for transparent materials such as glass and water. materials.
Position - Sets the baking position in world space.
Backface Culling - Determines if back-facing geometry will be included in the baking.