The BakeTool addon is packed with useful features for baking, like multi-channel baking and easy access to all settings.
BakeTool is a add-on for blender 2.71 made by Cogumelo Softworks that redesign the way that Cycles Bake work with a more coherent and easier workfow.
I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.
14 Comments
Pretty sexy - to bad I use xNormal.
Good job.
There are a few bakes that xNormal doesn't cover, like environment bakes and SSS bakes.
I know, I know, but how often I use environment bakes? Not so often.
Primarily I bake, like astrand130 said, normals, height, curvature etc. and no SSS at all. This will be become handy in my current project, but the main work will do xNormal ^^
It is always the same for me. In Blender we cant use blocker or cages ...and this is very important for me.
Have a nice day!
You can bake with cages since 2.71.
Watch the developer, Dalai Felinto, explaining how: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOMnNb82DRI
Uhhh didnt know that - this is great. Now we need a better 3D View experience in terms of handling high polycounts and we get it. This is one of the main reasons, why I use xNormal, too. I use ZBrush for sculpting and 20 millions polys at the same time ... :/
Better polycount performance is in the works :) Both OpenSubdiv and the viewport refactor should help this a lot.
xNormal is great when it comes to baking out Normal, Height, Curvature and AO maps from (sometimes very) High Poly models. but doesn't have a raytraced renderer engine that can bake out full Material renders like Cycles can.
Pretty cool man. I was just playing with baking normals in cycles, and with yours you don't have to have the model bigger than the source which is cool. Nice work.
Is baking for other than bump/normal all that useful? In an animation I would think it would stand out as breaking the illusion if for example shadows stayed fixed on an object in motion.
In games is pretty much essential. There are even commercial tools specialized only in baking. As for animation, maybe there is some explanation on this Andrew Price tutorial http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/introduction-baking-cycles/#.U9UehrGTKPU
Thanks for Bart to post it in Blendernation. Soon we will release it. ;)
May be its time to replace the default baking interface with BakeTool's interface, and make it default?
Agree.
Released http://cgcookiemarkets.com/blender/all-products/baketool/