Help with Kray texture baking

[bigstick]

Sorry if I've missed something obvious in the forum, but I'm looking for information on texture baking.

My understanding is that this is where a model is rendered, and the lighting and shadows baked onto the textures, and reapplied to the model.

In theory, if the baking and texturing is quick enough to do, creating animations is much faster because the render engine has less to do.
The other neat thing is that you can freely navigate your 'fully rendered' model in realtime, with better quality than a realtime render engine. So in that respect it's kind of like a game engine.

I accept that this is a simplistic description, because you won't have dynamic reflections.

I would really love to see some examples of videos or animations made using texture baking.

The thing I don't know, is how the overall time would compare for a texture baked animation, to a rendered animation, and how much the quality suffers.

If anyone can help me out with some information and links, I would be really grateful!

[Keraressi Abdelkarim]

look at janusz biela website . he have many video about baking gi and textures ex..... good luck


http://januszbiela.com/


he is the best

[jnom]

We need a smarter way to bake models in lightwave. Besides the ability to bake models in one go, we need to have a way to "explode" a model to prevent object occlussion.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/rttassist

3Dcoat is also doing something similar in another way.

[bigstick]

Actually, as much of a pleasure as it is to look at Janusz's work, his site is no good for what I need.

It's full of beautiful photographic renders, but there is no information on things like texture baking, and I didn't see any videos either.

Some years ago I saw a fantastic example of a texture-baked animation. It was an external daytime render with sunlight only. It was recorded from realtime movement through the model if I recall correctly. Like a 3D game, but much better quality. I can't find it now...

[Janusz Biela]

Actually, as much of a pleasure as it is to look at Janusz's work, his site is no good for what I need.

It's full of beautiful photographic renders, but there is no information on things like texture baking, and I didn't see any videos either.

Some years ago I saw a fantastic example of a texture-baked animation. It was an external daytime render with sunlight only. It was recorded from realtime movement through the model if I recall correctly. Like a 3D game, but much better quality. I can't find it now...

I change a bit profile of my web site...so You will not see.
But baking textures is not that important. Important is what you will do later with this.
Here my example (btw I finished render whole animation - I just not have "power" to end up it now )
The time render Dual Xeon : 1-4 min/frame

[bigstick]

I saw these images and they are beautiful!

But baking textures is not that important.

Well - that depends on what you want to do

Rendering convincingly is difficult. Creating animations to the same kind of quality is another level of difficulty up again. Apart from the fact that you have to set up the animation path and all the various parameters, you have the output options, with frame rates, and quality and codecs, and then you need really powerful hardware. That's why most people don't create animations, and most people who try to make them, don't do it very well.

Kray is a wonderful piece of software that enables dedicated and talented people to simulate reality. But, it's cool to take its power and simplify it so that we can start with beginners and step by step enable them to create really competent renders. No they won't be as good as professionals, but hopefully it will make the world a less ugly place. Once you get past the idea of, "Wow, that's generated on the computer - cool" you get used to it and can start to say things like, "That colour looks horrible, and I don't like the proportions, and is that the right approach?"

My idea is to create a rendered image, export a baked texture map, and reapply it to the model so you can freely navigate a 'rendered' model.
Then you can walk clients though your beautifully lit model in realtime. You can generate finished renders really quickly, because the GI is baked into the textures - as long as the lighting doesn't change. You can render with a much simpler set of parameters. Animations could take far less time. It's effectively like 'super caching' of GI. If surfaces change, you re-render the baked texture map and re-apply it to the model. If we can automate this to a 1-click operation, it would be fantastic.

This won't replace conventional rendering, but it could be a new tool to use when you needed it. Kind of like a game engine approach.

I know this might sound a bit crazy, but if you look at the Kray early interface compared with the proposed Kray 3 interface, it proves that yes you can make complex things simpler by carefully considering what you want to do, and working out the optimal approach.

[Janusz Biela]

Ah sorry I did not clarify: Is not important technically: you just setup Kray for Bake texture, good GI (QMC minimum) and big size of render image (depends from surface size of course). Later starts be difficult: How to setup reflection, bump map, composition in AE, post process.

Hint:
Bake Texture must be without bump effect, reflection and windows transparency (this last must hide)!
Because all effects above are turned OFF, render take very fast (10.000 pix is no problem)

[bigstick]

Thanks Janusz, that's really helpful!

So in effect you could create a specific texture bake render preset for this. I'm glad to see that it's fast. It should be perfectly possible to render reflections and bump with the texture-baked model. If you want to create animations, by splitting the render in this way, it should be much faster and you should be able to do a realtime walk through of the texture-baked geometry.

Do you know of any examples of either still images that use this approach?

Those fabulous images on your site can't have been just texture baked...

[Janusz Biela]

This scene can by use for example in Unity software (I am not sure but texture size is limited up to 4096 pix)
Is impossible to Bake reflection and bump because these effects are basic ray tracing processes which are depends from camera angle view. It must be done in last step in Ray Tracing mode as old render technique.
Scene without reflections and Anti Aliasing render in 3 sec (i7 CPU)

[Keraressi Abdelkarim]

janusz why i cant find video in your website ?!!

[bigstick]

Wow - now that's impressive! Why hasn't Kray conquered the market for games modification?

Thanks!

[Janusz Biela]

janusz why i cant find video in your website ?!!

Is not ready yet...I told before: no "power" to finish it

[Keraressi Abdelkarim]

thnx the pro (Y) . we waiting for any news from u i think u will put big and huge pack from mervelous to kray tips and tricks ^^ i feel . cause ur all time busy ^^ . good luck to u and to us too ^^

[bigstick]

Okay, so to produce this, you render the texture and reapply it to the model. How long does this take for each stage?

[Janusz Biela]

Bake texture took around 10-15h (I rendered it with Final Gathering and this was wrong...but this was half year ago. Since 3 moths I use only QMC and this should be done by this)
I did not replace original surfacing with bake textures - I updated them (I wrote before about bump/reflection maps) So Bake texture are in Diffuse channel - as should be but all surfaces has 100% luminescence - it is necessary to get exactly same brightness and contrast as in original render. The most important is tonemap: it MUST be switched OFF. Also should be OFF Ray Tracing shadows under LW.