Baking Question?

[Scottyz]

So I am currently going through putting things into a collection. It is fun to start to get some items that I have made and to know that they could possibly be used on other projects.
What I am wondering is what does “Baking” do? As I create items that I could use in other projects should I just save and keep those files or Bake what I created?

[Munsa]

I don’t know if I can answer your question, but I can explain what I do.

If I want to use the pieces on Unity, I bake the different material maps into one texture for each material channel (diffuse, normal, roughness…). Be careful with the resolution of the resulting map! Then I create the material directly in Unity exporting the piece without it, only with one UV map.

In Unreal (I am learning now how to do it), I prefer to export the piece without baking the maps, only unwrap it in one UV (I know it can be done with more but I have not learned how to do so yet), using the same UV map for all the materials (they can be one on the top of another). You can unwrap a second UV map for lighting, but it is no easy to do so. Then I import the textures to Unreal and create the material there (instances).

If you are asking about animations, physics and so on, I don’t know…

I hope it helps…

[FedPete]

In some functional parts of Blender the term and button Baking is used. You don’t need to use bake for sharing your work! A collection is a good solution for sharing.

When working with Blender there are some processes which cost a lot of calculation time. Baking is storing this outcome in memory (or file, or bitmap) to be reused without doing the calculation again. It saves time and increases render speed.

An example of baking is when you use Blender physics. Like a ball bouncing on a floor. Blender is capable of calculating the ball movement in a natural way. But every time you want to render the scene with the ball. this physics calculation is done again and again. Then is can be handy to bake (store) the physics movement…

Baking is also used for texturing. If your render takes an hour to complete. Parts of the render info could be stored in bitmaps (images) like normal-maps. And later reused in gaming engines to render fast animations. Because the outcome of the long Blender calculation is stored in a single bitmap. hence faster game render.

So, baking is interesting for game development and animations. And less for a single image render, where you are still busy in the development of your model. Where you need to recalculate your bake every time.
baking is used in the end process.

[Digitz]

I create a lot of procedural textures. These textures will not work in some other programs if I export my models without baking the diffuse, roughness, ambient occlusion and normal map textures to their own images. It can be a long process, but totally worth the time.
If you are using image textures with your models already then you don’t need to bake, or if you are doing texture painting, you just save out the texture images from blender and use those as your material in a different program after you’ve exported your model.

[Scottyz]

I appreciate all the replies to my question. This helps me have a much better understanding of what Baking is and when to use it. Thanks.