Need Help Baking A Texture To Uv Space

[maxc4p]

Hi,

I am new to Maya and have learned a lot on my own so far. I am stuck on understanding baking textures.

Specifically, I am trying to understand this:

http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=18

...and more specifically, I want to use Maya to manipulate the texture so that it looks like this:

http://www.qarl.com/qLab/pile/seamless/baked.jpg

The other images are not from Maya, of course, I am essentially trying to understand what is meant by "bake the textures to uv space". I have managed to project a texture onto a surface, but I have no idea how to bake it into UV space.

I cannot make the connection between baking and the UV Map.

I plan to reuse the texture outside of Maya, much like is done on the page (http://www.qarl.com/qLab/?p=18) - so I need to also understand how to extract the resulting texture.

I have checked a couple of books for this info and cannot find it and most tutorials don't cover stuff like this. I know how to do UV Mapping and save the UV Map itself, this approach seems to be different.

I'm sure that I am missing something really basic - I just need a little guidance to get me started.

(By the way, most of the models I amke use NURBS surfaces - just letting you know in case it makes a significant difference)

Thanks,

max

[joojaa]

project the texture via the camera, then you have 2 options you can use the mentlaray baking or maya baking.

this is the point where i tell you the educational information: this info could have been your 2 minutes after you read this if you had cared to hit f1. and write baking into the serach field

for mentalray baking use the renderset -> lightning/shading -> batch bake

or with maya open hypershade select shader and objecrt then choose edit -> convert to file texture

thats it. Again took me a whopping 15 seconds to search this in the manual not exactly new technology, i mean the eariest tutorial to use this i ever saw was form back in 1999 so the features been there for a while (but i know ithe sw thing has been as long as ive used maya). Read the manual it really really helps (ok reading any manual is a skill, ive honed mine for 18 tyears now daily, but unless you ever read one how hrd it seems you never acquire this skill!)

[maxc4p]

Hi...

Thanks for your quick reply. I think I am getting used to the terms - I was looking for "texture baking" - not just 'bake'.

I found some help in the manual, but it is a little too terse for me at the moment since I am a newbie to 3d and Maya.

I tried what you suggested and, reading the manual, tried to project the texture via the camera. I created a camera and was able to look throught it. I also projected a texture, but not sure if it was through the camera.

When I use batch bake, the object (a nurbs sphere with a blinn surface and a simple texture) turned black. I converted that to a texture and, of course, ended up with a black square. I saw that before posting my question here, so I am still not (much) better off.

Can you clarify how to project a texture via the camera...I checked the docs and they are not much help. I just need a basic idea and can make the connections from there

Thanks for your patience -max

[maxc4p]

QUOTE(Joojaa @ 06/26/07, 04:07 PM) [snapback]268713[/snapback]
...for mentalray baking use the renderset -> lightning/shading -> batch bake...

Woohoo! I got it

I ended up using the perspective camera but it worked perfectly!

Thanks for your help - I read the manual and your suggestion about using batch bake did the trick and got me on the right track.

-max