Texture baking prototype

[Ondra]

I have no idea what is the ideal workflow and what features are needed, so I need some help:
- is "Element background" color necessary?
- what types of output are required?
- is "projection mapping" necessary? If so, how is it used?

[rozpustelnik]

For the outputs: normal map and AO, material/color ID is a must for an external texturing app; gloss and bump would be also nice (when baked object is pre-textured).

[romullus]

- is "projection mapping" necessary? If so, how is it used?

Projection mapping is a must for texture baking. Without it, baking is pretty much useless.

p.s. looks like first quarter of this year can be terrific for Corona!

[Ondra]

ok, so... what does it do? Do you have any resources on it for somebody who never used it?

[romullus]

Projection mapping allows to bake maps from another model. Usuall scenario is baking from high poly model onto low poly model. Mostly it's used to bake normal maps, AO, displacement and diffuse maps. I'll try to search for some user friendly resources on projection mapping later.

[maru]

I think this is a typical use:

Though I have never used it...

[juang3d]

It's also used to translate one set of textures baked into one UV set to a second and different UV Set without having to "re-paint" the texture, it's really useful.

Cheers.

[romullus]

You're talking about projection modifier, but that has little to do with Corona.

[pokoy]

From back then when I was baking at work I remember that having these channels was very useful for realtime etc:

- complete map
- diffuse
- direct light
- shadow
- AO
- object ID didn't play a role for us but would be important

Now since direct shading and shadows aren't easily separated in Corona this might be impossible.

Another useful idea would be to map any material property (let'say IOR value or glossiness values) to a grayscale value, at least I'd know why it would be useful to me.

We only had limited usage of baking and it's really long ago, so keep in mind my knowledge is basic.

[juang3d]

You're talking about projection modifier, but that has little to do with Corona.

Nope, I'm talking about having a diffuse map with one type of UV in channel 1, and inthe same geometry, in channel 2 having the new UV layout made by the modeler, now think that you have all the character with all the textures ready, but all the UV layout has changed, you have two options, or you work again in the textures to adapt them to the new UV Layout or you project Channel 1 texture in Channel 2 UV Layout, and you have the new texture perfectly baked and ready to be used, and this applies for a variety of things you can do at the same time, like extracting different maps or whatever other thing.

You can do this with scanline (as long as scanline stays alive), but it's sampling technology it's not good at all, and if you have an specific material like the Corona material you won't be able to do it, so you have to convert all the materials, make the texture reprojection from Ch1 to Ch2 and reapply oyour materials again, so having this inside corona is good, you save a lot of time.

Cheers!

[romullus]

Yeah sorry, i misunderstood you. I thought you're talking about UV coordinates projection.

[juang3d]

No prob :)

[kahein]

HI everyone one
my contribution for the baking comprehension.
I put the  houdini maters class in firt because it much technical
for the rest sorry if it look like too much modo fan but if you go to the foundry vimeo channel, it's an amount of phenomenal videos, tutorial coures etc


Houdini MasterClass (more technical)
Mantra Rendering and Texture Baking ( second part of the video min 50 )

Progressive baking

Texture baking parts

Baking UI kit (interface)

Baking improvment

3Dsmax baking, an very old one but demonstrate the texture baking in max

[Tanakov]

Findaly! This is an amazing news to me. Im all in to this!

[DamianMachnik]

im also very interested in this topic

[Ondra]

Bugfixes and improvements

[maru]

[pokoy]

Looks great, congrats!

I could imagine that overriding the background for certain types could be useful (for example, the background in the AO map could be white since black means occlusion).

[romullus]

I don't think that background override matters, unless one use 0 px edge bleeding and saves into jpeg with crappy compression.

[pokoy]

I don't think that background override matters, unless one use 0 px edge bleeding and saves into jpeg with crappy compression.

Not that it's super important but it could be useful when you need to clone stamp in PS. You know, small details that make life easier in the end.
I think it's generally useful to use the same black/white values that are used within the map/channel type. Same would apply to glossiness where black means 0 glossiness but a user would start with a white color if he'd paint the map.

[Ludvik Koutny]

Background color is actually very important AFAIK. You often need to set it to some color that matches your average texture color. Many of the game engines use texture filtering that may blur edges of UVs quite far, and create significant outlines on the UV seams. There are professional Photoshop plugins that do advanced color gradient interpolation between individual UV islands, but two elementary things - background color and padding - should definitely work to make life of artists easier.

[Ondra]

Looks great, congrats!

I could imagine that overriding the background for certain types could be useful (for example, the background in the AO map could be white since black means occlusion).

done

[agentdark45]

YES! This could seriously speed up fly through animations.

[Ondra]

I made it available in the latest daily build

[pokoy]

I'd like to come back to something I requested: is it possible to bake a material property value to a map? Let's say I'd like to have glossiness amount mapped to a grayscale map (for example by using mxs properties, reflectGlossiness) or whatever else would be reasonable here.

Why I'm asking for this: I'm currently going through a lot of high res model and creating mid and low poly versions. I would like to have one material (or as few as possible) with every material property mapped and this feature could help to bake everything into a single map while making sure I preserve the original look of th highres models. I think that this could be useful for game artists, too.

[Ondra]

that is possible to add, but baking high-res geometry onto low-res one is currently not supported

[romullus]

My very first observations on Corona RTT. Those are probably very well known, but nevertheless...

• Output doesn't saves by specified path. User should save manually.
• AO element lacks any controls, except radius.
• Normal map is doesn't take shaded normals into account.

Overall i'm very exited about Corona's texture baking, can't wait for finished version!

[arqrenderz]

that is possible to add, but baking high-res geometry onto low-res one is currently not supported

http://www.handplane3d.com/ freeware

[romullus]

Handplane is not a texture baker, and even if it would be, ith has nothing to do with Corona RTT.

[maru]

I checked texture baking. I am not really familiar with the option - I've never used it in practice, but here are my notes:
-render stamp - it is usually unwanted - maybe it could be disabled by default when baking, or there should be a message about it like with DR
-color mapping - it affects the beauty pass, which is kind of obvious, but I am not sure if wanted - maybe also a message would help?
-gamma of the baked bitmaps - I had to override gamma to 1.0 when loading - maybe there is a clever way to save+load them with one click without the need to override?
-other material parameters such as reflection glossiness/ior etc - could it be saved as the maps used, or solid color? (I think this was already requested)

[raumtaucher]

I am also interested in this Topic.
The progressive texture baking from Modo seems to be a really amazing feature.

Examples where to use it:
If you need LOD(Level of Detail) Objects, it is necessary to bake texture and detailes from the HighRes object.
A good example is the tire of a Car.
The profile of a tire is a very complex mesh.
With heightmap for bump/displacement mapping or normal map for normal mapping, you can reduce the amount of triangles used for renderung very much if you do not need to go to close with the camera.

Regards André

[TomG]

Only experimenting, quick question.

If I enable noise reduction, then I see the effect in the Corona VFB on completing the Render To Texture, but the saved file does not have the noise reduction applied. I can manually save from the VFB and presto, but is it a restriction that the baking can't have the noise reduced version saved automatically (you never know with Max)?

(Scene is just a cube, saving the beauty pass out as the baked element)

Thanks!
   Tom

EDIT - Most recent daily build as of post date, under Max 2017.

[TomG]

And another quick question.

If I bake an object that has a displacement map in the material, using the beauty pass, I get unexpected results and wondering if this is correct? Now, I am new to this baking stuff, so it might just be me!

Attaching the crude scene I am using to get a handle on things, and then the result of a bake done when the material uses displacement (almost all dark with just white specks) and then a bake done when the same input is used as a bump instead (works as expected).

Thanks!
   Tom

[romullus]

Never tried to bake with render-time displacement (not an expert either). Could it work if you adjust cage accordingly to displaced mesh? You can temporarily disable displacement in material, add displace modifier with the same map and height settings on high poly object, adjust cage, turn off displacement modifier, turn on displacement in material and bake again. See if that would help.

Scratch that. It looks like Corona can't bake with projection mapping yet :/

[TomG]

TY for the possibility though, was a good thought - and could be the cause of the problems, that the Auto-unwrap isn't mapped to the displaced mesh but to the undisplaced version, so there's all this extra geometry that the unwrap hasn't handled. I have no idea how non-Corona unwrapping goes, never tried it, so not sure if this is just a constraint with baking in general; all new territory to me here (hence the most basic of scenes to keep things as simple as possible!)

Thanks!
   Tom

[romullus]

Well, i tried to bake with displacement and indeed, Corona gives wrong results here. Not sure if bug or just limitation of render-time displacement, though. Gotta try the same thing with Mental Ray and see how it goes. Will report here if i found something useful.

[TomG]

Hi all!

Still experimenting with baking. I notice that Render from Render to Texture does not create and save the output file using Corona, but does using MentalRay. You can manually save the file from the Corona VFB, but it's an extra step.

Here are the steps I followed

Create box
Apply material (standard, so I can use it in different engines; with checker map so I can see what is baked)
Create two lights, different colours
Save the scene in this form so I can reload as is and test

Corona
Render to texture dialog
Add Corona Beauty element (to go to the self illumination slot, but don't think this affects the result)
Change size to 512 (don't think this affects the result)
Leave the output filename and path at the default (Box001Corona_Beauty.tga)
Hit render in the render to texture
Inspect the material, and the bitmap has not been created and saved; the material node going into self illumination is black, and opening the file locator shows no file with that name has been created

MentalRay
Reload the scene, change to MR engine
Render to texture dialog
Add CompleteMap, to go to the self illumination slot
Change size to 512
Leave the output filename and path at the default (Box001CompleteMap.tga)
Hit render in render to texture
Inspect the material, and the bitmap was created and saved; the material node going into self illumination shows the result, and opening the file locator shows the file exists

Max 2017
Corona Apr 24th daily build

[TomG]

Have had mixed results here and can't isolate. I found MR had the same problem with the scene. I then created a new one with a sphere and displace and both Corona and MR worked, so I thought maybe it was unwrapping the cube. Tried with a new cube... and both worked this time.

Can't recall if I had applied a UVW_Map modifier to the cube first time round, maybe so and maybe that messed it up. Have sometimes had better results from Corona than MR with displacement too.

I've noticed a couple of other things, so will break those off into their own threads though, in case any of them is a genuine problem and not user error.

[TomG]

Hi all,

So with my same cube scene, I returned to test displacement. One I run the Render from Render to Texture, the cube becomes distorted when rendering with the original (unbaked) material. If I turn off the resulting "Automatic Flatten UVs" that's been added as a modifier, it returns to normal (or of course if I remove the map going in to the displacement slot). If I paint with a new material copied from the original before doing the render to texture (just in case anything was changed in the materials by the process), the distortion still occurs.

If I follow the same process with MentalRay, the cube does not distort even with the Auto Flatten modifier still enabled.

Thanks!
   Tom

[TomG]

Hi all!

A quick mod, replacing the cube with a sphere, and then same process to test. Result from the render to texture was used as self illumination in both cases, with no effect from scene lights. The Corona texture shows the seams where the object was unwrapped, but this does not occur with MentalRay. No displacement etc involved here, just a straight Standard material with checker pattern in the diffuse as the source.

Thanks!
   Tom

[romullus]

Did you use padding?

[TomG]

My blank stare will be all the answer you need :)

In other words, what is padding and where do I find it?

Thanks!
   Tom

[romullus]

Padding is edge bleeding. It helps to prevent seams to be visible in baked textures. You can find padding control in RTT window's objects to bake rollout. By default it is set to 2, check if it's not set to 0 in your Corona scene. Also try to rise it to 10 or so and see if Corona obeys this settings.

[romullus]

Hi all,

So with my same cube scene, I returned to test displacement. One I run the Render from Render to Texture, the cube becomes distorted when rendering with the original (unbaked) material. If I turn off the resulting "Automatic Flatten UVs" that's been added as a modifier, it returns to normal (or of course if I remove the map going in to the displacement slot). If I paint with a new material copied from the original before doing the render to texture (just in case anything was changed in the materials by the process), the distortion still occurs.

If I follow the same process with MentalRay, the cube does not distort even with the Auto Flatten modifier still enabled.

Thanks!
   Tom

If you use automatic flatten uvs, then your existing uvs are replaced with that. That's why your displacement looks different after baking. It's better to manually set proper uvs and use those for baking. Automatic are for lazy ones or when you in a hurry :]

[TomG]

Padding is edge bleeding. It helps to prevent seams to be visible in baked textures. You can find padding control in RTT window's objects to bake rollout. By default it is set to 2, check if it's not set to 0 in your Corona scene. Also try to rise it to 10 or so and see if Corona obeys this settings.

Aha this was the very thing - but it was in reverse. Padding was set to 2. Increasing to 10 made the gaps larger, setting it to 0 removed the seams.

[romullus]

So it should be bug then. I will check it out and make report. Thanks.

[TomG]

So it should be bug then. I will check it out and make report. Thanks.

Doing some more testing, sorry I may have posted in haste. Getting mixed results at the moment, going through steps to pin down what I am seeing.

[TomG]

Some confusion arose there - looks like the render to texture when using Corona was not saving the file (even though pointing to an already existing file; I knew it didn't create files, but thought it was ok writing to an existing one), so a bug there I suspect.

I rechecked results by manually saving the result of the RTT from Corona. Looks like padding makes no difference there, 0, 2 and 10 all gave an identical result. I do see the difference with MR, if I set to 0 then the seams show up (not as entirely black, but they are visible). So another bug there perhaps, that padding is not being used?

Thanks!
   Tom

[romullus]

Well, i just checked and it looks like Mental Ray is writing padding somehow strange, but Corona does not write it at all. Should be bug.

I can't replicate a bug with no saving to file, though. Can you write step by step what you do?

[TomG]

Sure! I've kept it barebones, with everything as default as possible

- Create sphere
- Apply Standard shader with checker pattern in diffuse (Standard so I can use the same shader in Corona and MR)
- Open RTT
- Add Corona Beauty to the output elements
- I leave this at default path and name Sphere001Corona_Beauty.tga being written to the Documents\3dsMax\sceneassets\images folder
- Render from the RTT dialogue (leaving to do the autounwrap since just a simple object and test! Sometimes lazy is good!)
- Screengrab attached of the resulting baked material, with the bitmap open - path etc is correct in that, but the preview is black
- The file does not exist at that location when I open it up

- For checking the save to an existing file, I change the "leave the default filename" for the RTT step to point to an existing file
- I change the checker colour just to be sure I know if something has changed
- Render from RTT, the file correctly appears in the baked texture and is loaded, but has not changed - second screengrab attached showing the yellow checkers that are the source material, and you can see the baked bitmap still has the old colours in it, the file was not overwritten

Performing the same steps with MR does create a file if none existed, and does overwrite the file with the render if one did exist.

Let me know if any more info would be of help!

EDIT - PS ignore the checker going into the diffuse on the baked texture :) I would normally delete that, set diffuse to 0, turn on Self Illumination, to check how that compares to the originally lit object, in this case, but didn't do that here since just testing.

[romullus]

Ok, got it. I always choose render to textures only option, so that bug just slipped unnoticed :] Will report it on mantis.

[TomG]

TY! Sometimes it helps to be new at something, then you make all these strange choices and so test new things :)

[88qba88]

Hey,

I thought I'll share with you a project we did to recreate a small part of Elblag's (Poland) old town from 40s. All textures were baked in Corona, then we made an app for Android and Apple phones. It's free, so you can check it out:)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/themuseum./id1097602764?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.theconstruct.themuseum&hl=en&utm_source=applify.me&utm_medium=web

I've attached 2 WIPs with Corona's "clay mode" on :)

[maru]

Qba, mind sharing an APK? I installed it, Google Play says it's installed, but I cannot see it on my phone, even after rebooting. Strange...

[maru]

Got it working. Cool, but you should definitely make it possible to move under the arch, and to scare the pigeons away. :)
Just some more polishing and I am sure it will be awesome.

Also, time to get a new phone as 1280x720 / 2 lenses is a nightmare.

[twcg]

Rendering itself works fine, but i also have the file saving problem, even if "Render to file only" is ticked. (Max 2014 and 2016)
Tested Corona VFB and native Max VFB. Any ideas?

[romullus]

Tested Corona VFB and native Max VFB. Any ideas?

How did you test native max VFB? Maybe you're doing it wrong? Render To Textures has its own render button.

[twcg]

Tested Corona VFB and native Max VFB. Any ideas?

How did you test native max VFB? Maybe you're doing it wrong? Render To Textures has its own render button.

HM? I just changed it in the Render Settings (System->VFB Settings), then pressed the Render-button in the RTT Dialog. Just thought it could be a framebuffer problem. :)
Mental Ray works fine.

[romullus]

Just did some quick test and Corona saved to file even though render to files only was unchecked. That is correct behaviour.

Curious, why everyone gets different results?

[TomG]

Some more info -

I followed the same process, but this time I set the path to be on my E:\ drive, left the same default filename. This time, the file *was* created.

So first thought is maybe some sort of Windows permissions thing?

But one extra puzzle.

- Reload the scene to the default state before baking with no restart of Max
- Open the RTT dialog, add the Corona beauty but leave path set to the default
- Render from RTT
- Inspect the resulting material: the bitmap node in the baked material shows the expected path in the Bitmap field (the C:\....sceneassets\images\), and this is the path that opens if I click on the field to browse for an image (and the image is indeed not there)
- But the Bitmap node is in fact loading the image from the E:\ drive, and will render and show that image, even though it is not what is in the Bitmap's path field.

Image attached, you can see from the Bitmap preview that it is showing the image, and that the path is pointing to the C:\ drive location (where there is no such file). Clicking Reload doesn't change anything, the image from the E:\ drive location continues to be displayed. If I delete the image at the E:\location, it does vanish from the Bitmap node.

Don't know if that is just a Max thing when a bitmap is not found, or some extra piece of this puzzle.

Thanks!
   Tom

[romullus]

I see you're using max 2017, could it be just new bugs from new max? I wouldn't touch new product from Autodesk until there's at least one service pack available :]

[OFF-TOPIC] That new flat UI looks absolutely horrible. I even can't distinguish input fields from text labels. If there's no way to somehow revert to old UI, i doubt i could work with it. [/OFF-TOPIC]

[romullus]

Just did some quick test and Corona saved to file even though render to files only was unchecked. That is correct behaviour.

Curious, why everyone gets different results?

Ok, after some more tests with RTT, i'm getting some cases where Corona fails to write to files too. Very strange indeed.

[synthillusio]

Hi there

RTT is crucial feature for my workflow so I'm really happy it's already here! Great work Corona team!
Some notices:

1) It seems "Corona_Light" element doesn´t work. It allways renders out black map.
    (would I get beauty pass by combining light and diffuse color pass?)
2) also experienced the problem with automatic saving.
3) padding is not there. But - in all renderers I know the padding is invisible in VFB. Saved image is post-processed and has padding aplied.
4) projection mapping - crucifuckual feature for RTT, I'm really looking forward :)
5) I tried RTT whith  net render - works fine, doesn't save

[romullus]

I found that if i explicitly specify path, then Corona saves file, but if i leave default path, then it doesn't. Anyone else can confirm this?

[TomG]

I found that if i explicitly specify path, then Corona saves file, but if i leave default path, then it doesn't. Anyone else can confirm this?

Haven't tested in 2016 yet to compare to 2017, and not yet updated to the newest daily build before testing - but yes I see the same thing. If I even just move up one level to the sceneassets folder rather than sceneassets/images folder then it works, so it doesn't need an entirely different folder.

As a note, I did that and it worked, and keeping the scene in that state, I repainted with the base material, changed the path back to the /images folder in the RTT dialog (thinking that perhaps if it had been manually set one time, it would start working) - but it still didn't work. So could be specific to that path, whether set as a default or chosen manually.

Hope this helps!
   Tom

[TomG]

Installed Apr 29 build, and ran Max 2016.

Now, in Max 2016 I have changed the default folder (apparently, I forget!), as the default path in the RTT is now pointing at a folder on my F: drive, so a completely unrelated location.

Interestingly, leaving this as the default and rendering from RTT fails to create the file. If I manually change it to another path, it works and creates the file - even if I change it to the sceneassets/images location that wasn't working before.

So it seems specifically to do with the default path only, and seems to occur in 2016 in the same way as 2017?

Hope this helps!
   Tom

[romullus]

I think it has something to do with the fact that by default there's only filename displayed in inpud field, whereas when you explicitly specify path, full path is displayed.

[romullus]

Padding works great in RC6. Better than in scanline and much much better than in Mental Ray!

[TomG]

Yep, looks like both issues - the padding, and the default file path - seem to be working fine from some quick tests in RC6. Excellent!

[synthillusio]

Hi Corona team.

When can we expect Projection mapping?
I was so happy RTT is already here but without Projection mapping it is almost useless for me.

[mike_kennedy]

Second this, so need projection mapping.

WOuld any one know a good work flow for Corona and RRT.
We are padding at 32 and still getting seams showing

https://playcanv.as/b/8ypVaNs5/


The dislike of Corona for Gamma 1 is also an issue, the bakes and the scene lighting don't match well
user error I am sure, these  are our setting for exteriors


I have more info on this thread, please reply there since it was the one that got feedback.


https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=16749.new;topicseen#new