Baking textures can bake arbitrary textures into an image and make use of Procedural textures in displacement mapping (figure 1). In OctaneRender®, DisplacementThe process of utilizing a 2D texture map to generate 3D surface relief. As opposed to bump and normal mapping, Displacement mapping does not only provide the illusion of depth but it effectively displaces the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface. cannot utilize a Procedural texture map. This texture node provides a way to bake Procedural textures into an image to use as a Displacement map. The Baking texture uses the texture preview system, and then the texture appears like an Image texture to the rest of the system. The baking is done whenever an input changes, and baking is calculated on-the-fly. The internal image is not stored in the project, so it needs recalculating whenever you load the project.
In the following illustration, the NodeGraph Editor window is used to clearly illustrate the association of the various texture nodes.
Figure 1: The Turbulence node used for Displacement by filtering it through the Baking texture node.
Texture
A procedural texture can be specified and subsequently used as a displacement map.
Enable Baking
Activates the baking process.
Resolution
Determines the resolution of the baked texture map.
Samples per Pixel
Determines the samples per pixel which can be increased if the baked texture appears too pixelated.
Texture Type
Specifies the bit depth of the texture map. LDRImage formats that have 8 bits per color channel such as the common image formats JPEG, PNG, GIF among others. is 8 bit and HDR Linear Space can be used if the image has a 32 bit-depth.
RGB Baking
Converts RGB values according to the type of procedural texture. If the procedural texture has RGB values, enable this option. If it is greyscale values, leave this option off.
Power
Adjusts the intensity value of the baked texture.