I can’t find a solid answer for this question.
I’m baking using a hi-res texture. The original texture is nice and sharp, but when I bake it comes out blurry. Here’s some samples:
you should always give more info…ie blend version a must, maybe your blend file here…however… a 10 second google search came up with this link, seems appropriate.
blender.stackexchange- is a great first place to go.
Best of luck.
Blender 2.8 - I’ve been through all the top google searches and none of them were able to answer my question.
I actually posted a more detailed question over on blender.stackexchange.
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/154613/baked-image-texture-is-blurry
What is the resolution of the source image , and the one you are baking to?
Original: 6144 x 4756
Baking To: 6144 x 4756
Both same
I scaled the original to +3.0 (using mapping node) so I could fit more wood planks into the object
Make it 12000x9000.
Maybe I am wrong, but if you scaled up the original with a mapping node, then the image you are baking to should also be scaled up the same amount, otherwise the resolution wont match up.
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I could, but the texture would be huge - 18k x 15k. Is it standard practice to do that when scaling the original?
If you scaled the original x3, and you’re baking the original to a new texture, you’re going to need 9x as many pixels (3^2) to get the same density. Yes, that’s 9x as much memory; no, it’s not standard practice to use 18k x 15k textures. (Maybe at Pixar, I dunno.)
In the picture you showed, you certainly don’t need that high of a resolution-- which suggests that you’re using a small part of your texture space. But of course, that was a just a demonstration of your problem. I dunno, are you doing a close fly-by of a long wooden plank? All over it? If so, then sure, put all your memory into the texture.
Really, why even bake in this case? You have a texture. You’re happy enough with the way it tiles. Keep on using it. Don’t try to pack it ninefold into a new texture that’s otherwise identical.
If I don’t scale it, the table will be “made of” 2.5 large planks of wood instead of ~many smaller ones.
If I scale my UV’s outside of the UV window, only the UV’s inside the window will have baked material applied to it.
I honestly don’t think scaling is the issue anymore. If I was scaling the image larger, then yea - it would start to look pixelated.
The material is from my Poliigon subscription, I’m not allowed to redistribute it unless it’s been modified - in my case, baked. It would be so much easier if I could use the original, but I plan to sell the model and include textures.
Frustrating 
I don’t know this Poliigon site, but… just don’t buy textures with idiotic licenses attached? I’m sure you can get a nice royalty free wood planks texture elsewhere.
If you’ve ever watched a BlenderGuru video on YouTube, then you’ve heard of Poliigon. License aside, it’s actually a great resource - you get more than just the basics. If you’re not into paid subscriptions, they have free textures / models too.
I think the issue is, that you want your textures to be higher res than they need to be. A 4K Texture for the whole table should be more than enough.
Of course, if you baked a 4k texture scaled times 3 to a 4k texture , it will look pixelated when viewing from very close.
But you have to ask yourself what the purpose of the model you want to sell is, from how far away will it be viewed, etc…
The first picture (the sharp one) is what the original texture looks like after being scaled.
The blurry one is what it looks like after being baked.
The final baked image isn’t being scaled.
If the original scaled image looks sharp before baking, then why doesn’t the baked version of the sharp image look sharp too?
I don’t know what the end user will be doing with the model - hopefully no closeups.
Because this is what is happening if you are baking a scaled texture using the mapping node in blender.
This example would be scaled up by the factor of 2 on X and Y.
4K x 2 x 2 = 16K.
So you would need a 16K resolution image if you’re baking from one plane to another, if you want it to look the same.
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You actually didn’t “scale” the image. With the mapping node you changed nothing more than to make it simply distribute 3 times horizontal and three times vertical instead of one. In the viewport you can zoom in and it looks nice. But that is not what you get when you bake it to a new texture which is of the same size as the original one. Of course you loose 3x3 times the resolution.
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Thank you all for the help! I scaled X and Y to 2.0 and created an image 4x larger. It’s not perfect but very close to the original. File size is huge, but it’ll have to do. 
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