[Solved] Bake lighting to color

[Mistale]

Hi,

I really love the results you get when baking AO / normal-map from retopo to paint-room.

But if you're going to use the low-poly object inside a game-engine and don't plan on using a bumped shader, is there any way to bake ALL lighting into the diffuse color of the texture? Meaning shadows + highligts etc. from the current light setup inside 3D-Coat.

I get that it would only be viable for a certain light-direction, and that's ok by me.

I just want the texture to look as good in a certain view-direction as it does when the normal-map is used inside the paint-room.

I'm not really content with the way baked AO looks with flat-shading, so any help with the above (or ideas on complementary software that supports baking of lighting) is really appreciated!

Otherwise I'll have to resort to manually painting shadows and highlights, but I'd rather choose a more automated workflow. Without it, I can't really justify making a beatiful object in 3D-Coat when I still have to re-create all details manually in the diffuse texture for the low-poly.

Thank's in advance!

Anders

[puntoit]

just a couple of days ago I was talking with digman about this subject. I wanted to create a shader that would bake a point light map. My first attempt was to create a shader ball that was lit from above- After the bake I discovered that it doesn´t project as the sphere would be in world space. Instead it seem to do multiple projections from somewhere in the left upper behind.

So our next step was to alter the rock shader and we made a white bitmap for the top image in that shader and a black and white split image for the front. This technique came closer to our desired result but, as the top image is a projection in that shade we also had white on the bottom.

Then we (two non-programmers) started hacking the super shader file that is using three projecting images trying to get it to use only the front and side projection. We ended up realizing that we are really lacking enough programming skills and are now hoping (and calling out to the hackers out there) that somebody will make us a shader that uses only one image that will be projected from the front (or side) as not much more is needed for that idea.

This, of course, then will result in only a fake light information but will be lacking any shadow information. But maybe that is a start.

[Carlosan]

The supershader project from X, Y, and Z

The projection is local or global ?

is -may be- better a Camera projection ?

------------------------------------------------

TXTR_TREE01

Have front and side projection

[Mistale]

Thank you both for your thoughts on the subject.

I've been testing baking lighting inside Blender instead, and that works but I would still prefer if that functionality was available inside 3D-Coat.

[alvordr]

Um...how do you get to this:

[alvordr]

While not exactly what you're after in your request, this may help:

http://www.texturebaking.com/

[Carlosan]

Supershader ? is not in your default install ?

http://marupura.word...8A%95%E5%BD%B1/

[alvordr]

It is, but I when I tried to edit it's settings to see what I could do with it, I got 4 settings. I just realized, however, that if I construct a new shader from it, I get far more.

[alvordr]

It would be handy if there were an HDR/EXR slot. I have a few I could use to create nice reflections.

[alvordr]

There also really needs to be a way to rename the shader, once it's created.

[puntoit]

it proved quite difficult to find this tread again. Now I´ve set this topic to follow. Also I am into extreme low poly game modeling at the moment. Persons are made of only 750 triangles and the weapons of only 150 triangles. So I am baking very high resolution on a very small resolution. As I have experienced not the best results with compositing the bake layers in gimp I would like to do that work in 3d-coat. So far I did some tests with creating shader balls but the results in 3dc are not really consistent. Tomorrow I will write more details and will post images from my tests. Now I have worked for 36 hour and hear my bed calling.

Btw, the Super Shader sadly doesn´t get baked.

[Mistale]

While not exactly what you're after in your request, this may help:

http://www.texturebaking.com/

Thanks! It looks good, but unfortunately I have no way of incorporating 3DS-Max into my workflow... But thats definately the kind of solution I would need.

it proved quite difficult to find this tread again. Now I´ve set this topic to follow. Also I am into extreme low poly game modeling at the moment. Persons are made of only 750 triangles and the weapons of only 150 triangles. So I am baking very high resolution on a very small resolution. As I have experienced not the best results with compositing the bake layers in gimp I would like to do that work in 3d-coat. So far I did some tests with creating shader balls but the results in 3dc are not really consistent. Tomorrow I will write more details and will post images from my tests. Now I have worked for 36 hour and hear my bed calling.

Btw, the Super Shader sadly doesn´t get baked.

That's about the same polybudget as I have. So far, the solution that has gotten me closest to a good result has been to bake from high-poly to low-poly in Blender using full render.

The thing missing at the moment in Blender is to be able to include specular highlights into the bake.

If you sculpt inside Blender instead of in 3D-Coat, specular can also be baked from a high sub-div level to a low by using some special nodes for the material on the object, but it won't work when baking from one object to another.

But since shading looks even better inside 3D-Coat, I really miss not being able to get the same kind of fidelity into a texture.

[alvordr]

I realized the same thing about the supershader yesterday when I was testing. It doesn't appear to bake.

[Mistale]

I realized the same thing about the supershader yesterday when I was testing. It doesn't appear to bake.

I've done some tests in Modo today, and must say that it's my new favourite for high-poly => low-poly baking.

Both a clean AO bake and a full final color bake looks spectacular, and specular highlights bakes without a problem...

[alvordr]

Nice to know. I've been interested in Modo for a while. Just can't buy it right now.

[puntoit]

here my promised results of my tests:

- I created a shader ball for TopLight_01 and got those results from the images.

- So I simplified the shader ball to 2Colors_01 in order to understand what is happening. In the resulting images you can see that the shaderbal information is being projected multiple times on the object from some position. Baking it when in top view didn´t change the results.

- Then I used the Txtr_Tree01 shader as a base and created the 2Colors_Box_01 shader. I used one image (red) for the top and an image that is half red and half green for the side. This projected consistent colors on the object, but since the the top image is going all the way through it doesn´t work as a toplight shader as we won´t get the dark parts on the surfaces pointing down.

- During these tests I also created the MetalTopLight_01 shader as I wanted some parts with a specific color and a sharp reflection. Strangely the results in closely what I was looking for even though (I think) I used the same base shader (PicMat_Metal) as a start to create the new shader.

So if you think I am now less confused you are wrong. Maybe somebody of you out there will figure out a cheat how we can have baked lighting information.

Or we just have to convince Andrew to give us the possibility to bake real lights, mabey even hdr images, into our objects

[Mistale]

Great detective job puntoit! I'm as confused as you are, if it's any help...

I think the possibility to get what we want is already in place, it's just a matter of getting the correct information from Andrew or someone else on exactly HOW to achieve it.

[Carlosan]

mantis request open
Please add your +1, ty

0001097: To bake lighting information
http://3d-coat.com/mantis/view.php?id=1097

 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightmap

[Carlosan]

i use a matcap shader to fake one point light just to bake it from voxels to paint room

and to use the baked layer like lighting map

[mitchellchelin]

Supershader?

am i missing something is this ment to be a default addon to 4.5? or higher? as i never seen this option or had the option to install it

Can someone explain this further to me?


sorry for the old bump in thread

[Carlosan]

Hi 

Supershader was an old sculpt material ready for version 4.1

Supershader.zip

 

uncompresses the folder inside this path

\Documents\3D-CoatV45\Shaders\Custom

[Carlosan]

Baking multiple useful maps in Paint room->Textures->Light baking tool

or

You need to make two renders in render room at screen resolution
One from front and one from the back
Save camera position for each
Then go to sculpt room (haven’t tried from paint room)
Import the two renders as stencil
Set up one stencil from camera and hit reset to adjust to screen size
Set up projector from stencil
Save file in case next action produces crash
Do fill layer with projection
Deactivate projector
Go to paint room and create new layer
With paintbrush and rectangle stroke mode paint all you see to create a mask (ignore back faces)
You need to paint many times with rectangle to cover all
Hide layer and set it up as clip mask for filled layer with render
Do the same on other side with second render
Go to flat shading mode and blend the two layers on new layer

(Thx Silas Merlin !)

[Murray]

Hello, 

So I gave thew new update a go and wanted to try the lightmap baking. While it does work I still was hoping for a little more from the bake. Unless I am missing something it just seem like it bakes the  light from the render room and doesn't take into account the material being used?

This thread link to a video which shows what would be ideal where the lighting is baked and is affected depending on what material is used on the part of the mesh. for example there is no specular highlights baked for the rubber of the tyre but the metal does. 

I cant see how this is possible with the lightbaking tool as it stands. If it is can some please explain the workflow. Here is what I am getting and here is what I would like 

 

Thanks for any help!

[KRAN]

On 30.11.2016 г. at 6:29 PM, Murray said:

Hello, 

So I gave thew new update a go and wanted to try the lightmap baking. While it does work I still was hoping for a little more from the bake. Unless I am missing something it just seem like it bakes the  light from the render room and doesn't take into account the material being used?

This thread link to a video which shows what would be ideal where the lighting is baked and is affected depending on what material is used on the part of the mesh. for example there is no specular highlights baked for the rubber of the tyre but the metal does. 

I cant see how this is possible with the lightbaking tool as it stands. If it is can some please explain the workflow. Here is what I am getting and here is what I would like 

 

Thanks for any help!

You need to transfer all the height data from the materials to the imput world space normal map to get all the additional material details inside of substance Painter.
You just need to follow these steps when you are done with your texturing: (make sure you are happy with the textures inside of the material mode in SP first, in other words texture it as a real time asset)
1. Go to export maps and either export all your maps or create a special preset that lets you export the end result normal map only.
2.Re-import your normal map in the same scene in SP and assign it to the IMPUTnormal map channel.  (It's a good thing if you create a new folder in the layers tab and you store all your layers there and turn off visibility just for the performance)
3. Go to the baking menu and remove all the high poly models and uncheck normal map but leave all the other maps. ( you do this so SP can generate new imput maps from the new normal map you just imported)
4. After its all done SP will load all the new maps in their umput slots. The one that is really important for the Lighbake filter is the world space normal map and the cavity map.
5. Turn on your folder's visibility and press "C" to enter base color mode. 
6. Now drag adn drop the Baked Light filter on top of everything in the layers tab. 

You just have to play around with few sliders etc to get the look you want, but all the additional details will work now.
Cheers.
 

[deburger]

So, is there way to bake light like that in 3dCoat yet?
 

[Carlosan]

Lightmap baking - how to create reflection layer into the diffuse color:

https://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/25841-lightmap-baking-how-to-create-reflection-layer-into-the-diffuse-color/