Hello all -
I am wondering if the following would be possible. Basically I am looking for a workflow allowing me to preview/test my Highpoly to Lowpoly bakes in one click at any time during the modelling process. The goal is not to create final bakes or materials, but rather, to run frequent test bakes in order to make sure that everything is in good working order and aligns correctly before moving on to the real, final bake in Xnormal/Knal/Substance Painter requiring obj/fbx exports.
The catch is that the current Bake action in Blender relies on a few conditions that I would like to avoid.
- First, I would like to be able to specify my desired texture size directly from the Bake panel - that is to say not having to create a texture in the image editor, create a new material for it, and so on. The new image texture and material should be automatically created, and automatically applied to the receiving low (and ideally, the viewport would automatically switch to texture mode if not set to that mode already at the time of clicking the Bake button).
- Also, and as expected in many cases, the current Bake action requires the low to match the highs in the space of the scene. I would like to work the opposite way : I would like to be able to have my highs located at 0 0 0 and my target low at 0 100 0. The tool would take the offset into account and bake things as if everything was at 0 0 0.
(of course one could probably add a keyframe to the low to move it in and out of the way, but that’s not an option as it is a rigged and animated model, and adding keyframe data on top of that would leave the scene unclean).
Here is a mockup showing what such an alternate panel could look like :
My question are :
1 - Does such a tool exist already ?
2 - If not, would it be possible to create such a panel ?
Thank you for your time.