Could someone explain to me how to use the new render baking feature? I’ve followed all the instructions and it creates some TGA files, but I cannot see how to use them. I thought render baking would speed up my animations as it would just do the textures once, but it seems not to be making the renders any faster. Could someone please explain?
Ok, I can’t actually remember how to use the new baking feature at the moment, something about having a blank UV image in the image editor. But,
You are actually generating images? After you have your images you then apply them to your geometry as UV mapped textures. Then you don’t have to render with ray tracing anymore. Turn off rays, turn off lights (wait, does the new baking include lights?) and just shoot a pic from a camera. Or more likely a mix of settings with the baked objects excluded from any lights etc. or don’t bake lights and just bake AO and textures.
No rays = very fast.
OK Marty, thanks for the reply. I have managed to create images (as TGA files). I haven’t applied the images as textures. I am asking whether the render bake feature does this automatically or not.
Ah, right. No not automatically. You save from the image window then add a texture to the objects material, load that image you’ve saved into the texture and set mapping to UV.
From the release notes, “After baking, textured display in the UI is updated. Note that Images then still have to saved manually.”
It’s understandable that you might think the images are applied automatically though. Several, more mature, applications do do just that. Maybe one of these days a code writer will have some spare time and automate the process in blender as well.
Use the braybaker script. Sounds better.
The answer to my real problem was to turn off raytracing. But thanks, someone should put your advice in the manual for other clueless newbies.