Atlas Baking Problem

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hello all,
I’m learning how to bake multiple objects on to 1 UV map.
I’m having a struggle with something and can’t seem to find the answer anywhere. I realize I’m not doing something right, but I can’t figure it out :frowning: maybe someone can help!

Here’s my struggle: I set up a simple scene with a rusty/metallic text, and a simple smudged looking floor.
Everything looks good, so I want to combine these two items into 1 UV island, then the problem begins…
To fit both islands into 1 UV, both textures become way to stretch as I shrink the UV islands to fit in the Atlas.
How do I keep the textures from stretching while fitting everything into the Atlas UV?

if anyone has any tutorials or tips, please let me know. I hate UV’s so much because of this:P lol

Thank you!

2

This is the results that I wish to bake:

Bake_Help1.jpg1904×1001 489 KB

…and this is the horrible image I get, which isn’t anything that I want:(
Bake_Help2.jpg1904×1001 492 KB

… I baked this using “combined” baking, and “selected to active” with the first image being the first one selected.

3

Thanks for the help everyone :slight_smile:

4

Imagine you get this scene done IRL using cardboard or on a smaller scale in plain paper. If you cut the letters and lay down on a floor you’ll probably cover all lighted surface if not a bit more. This is area where details on the letters are painted.
Looking at your unwrap, first you’re wasting almost 1/4 of the available UV space you could use to paint more pixels for smaller details and, second, area taken by letters unwrap is much smaller than one for the floor. This again ‘helps’ to loose pixely details on letters.
To be honest you confuse me mentioning ‘Selected to Active’ option. I can not see how this can fit there.
Baking to one image is useful if you aim for the game asset - technically one texture loads somehow faster and this is a compromise between the speed and a quality usually. There should be no need to squeeze all into one texture if you’re aiming for the pure quality imho.

5

Thanks so much for the reply, Eppo :slight_smile:
So you’re saying, if I want to have multiple objects in 1 UV Island, it’s best to put the UV’s together before adding texture/painting?

6

Absolutely not.
What i’m saying is… say you had two initial images each 1024x1024, one for the floor, one for the letters (no tiling assumed).
If you bake both objects into one image 1024x1024 (and in addition used is just a certain percentage of the image due to losses caused by island margins) you get 2 times less pixel resolution for the final.
This means you have to increase bake image size at least 2 times -2048x2048 to get about the same texture density.