Bake Geometry Info

Geometry baking info is the process of saving 3D surface details like normals, curvature, and ambient occlusion.

Geometry baking info is the process of saving physical shape details from a 3D model, such as surface curves, edges, and high-resolution details, into flat 2D image files called texture maps.
3D surface details like normals, curvature, and ambient occlusion are saved for internal calculations. This baking process is needed when you work using Material nodes.

How Baking Works

• High and Low Models: You compare a very detailed high-polygon mesh with a simple low-polygon mesh.
• Ray Casting: Software shoots invisible lines (rays) from the low-poly surface to find where the high-poly surface sits.
• Data Saving: The captured depth and angle data are saved into maps like normal maps, displacement maps, or ambient occlusion maps

Light sources (distribution of lights)

• over the hemisphere
• over the sphere
• over hemisphere + sphere

Lighting render target

You must choose a layer to which the occlusion calculation is placed. Can choose to add a new layer automatically or overwrite the current layer.
– In the first case, you do not forget to delete a new layer for light calculation. Also, a new color option, “To time,” is installed for a new layer.
– In the case of rendering the former layer, all its color information will be deleted.

Lights count: The more lights, the longer the calculation. The more light sources there are the better the quality of lighting and the longer its calculation.
The maximum value is 256, and the minimum value is 16.

Additional anti-aliasing samples: Amount of post-smoothing steps after occlusion calculation. The calculation will be used the texture several times bigger. This allows you to get rid of some artifacts if there are too small UV islands or long pixels.
Warning: this function will slow down the calculation and consume more RAM and VRAM.

Direction Yaw: Yaw means turning or rotating an object left or right around a vertical axis (like shaking your head “no”). It defines the compass direction or heading that the front of an object is facing.
Direction Pitch: Pitch is the vertical tilt angle that determines if a direction or object points:

• Up (positive tilt)
• Down (negative tilt)
• Flat/Horizontal (zero degrees)

Direction Scattering: Scattering, waves, light, or particles spread out in a full three-dimensional space (x, y, and z directions) after hitting an object.
Intensity: Intensity means the strength of the signal, light, or reflection returned at a specific 3D point or voxel (3D pixel).
Light count: is the total number of active light sources (like points, spots, or directional lights) illuminating a scene or allowed per object.
Radius: a light’s radius controls source size and falloff distance, which determine shadow softness and the area the light reaches.

Luminance to Alpha: turn the brightness (light and dark parts) of an image into a transparency mask.
Bright white areas become solid, dark black areas become see-through (transparent), and gray areas become partly see-through.
Separate paint objects: Explode the object on parts to avoid wrong AO contact projections.