Studio and Graph › Texture

Bake Maps

Projects a dense sculpt (High Poly) onto a game-resolution mesh through that mesh's UVs and produces tangent-space normal, ambient occlusion, curvature, height, position and material-ID textures, e...

When to use it

How to use it

1
Connect the low-poly (with UVs) to Mesh and the sculpt to High Poly
2
Tick the maps you want, set the resolution and the projection distance
3
Press Bake Maps - each map appears on its own texture output pin

Pins

InputsOutputs

Pin	Type	Description
`Mesh`	Mesh	The game-res mesh the maps are baked into. It needs UVs.
`HighPoly`	Mesh	The sculpt or scan carrying the detail. Leave it empty to bake the low-poly against itself.

Pin	Type	Description
`Mesh`	Mesh	The same low-poly, untouched. Baking never changes geometry.
`NormalMap`	Asset	The high poly's surface detail as a tangent-space normal map.
`AOMap`	Asset	Ambient occlusion, traced against the high poly.
`CurvatureMap`	Asset	How sharply the high poly bends. Feed it to a cavity or edge-wear mask.
`HeightMap`	Asset	How far the high poly floats above or sinks below the low-poly surface.
`PositionMap`	Asset	Where each point sits inside the high poly's bounding box, written as colour.
`MaterialIDMap`	Asset	A flat colour for each material ID on the high poly.

Settings

Setting	Type	Description
`Normal (Tangent Space)`	True/False	The normal map. If your low-poly has no tangents, they get worked out from its normals and UVs just for the bake; the mesh itself is left alone. Green reads above mid-grey where the high poly tilts towards increasing V, and red above mid-grey where it tilts towards increasing U. That is the same basis the engine's own bakers use and the same one the MikkTSpace tangents on import produce, so a map baked here shades correctly in the viewport as-is. Anything downstream that expects the opposite green direction needs that channel inverted on the way out.
`Ambient Occlusion`	True/False	Ambient occlusion, traced against the high poly. Much the slowest map here: it fires Occlusion Rays rays for every sample in every texel.
`Bake Curvature`	True/False	How sharply the high poly bends. This is what you feed a cavity or edge-wear mask.
`Height / Displacement`	True/False	How far the high poly floats above or sinks below the low-poly surface, remapped into the Inner and Outer range below. Also called displacement.
`Position (Object Space)`	True/False	Where each point sits inside the high poly's bounding box, written out as colour.
`Material ID`	True/False	A flat colour per material ID on the high poly. Handy as an ID mask when you assign materials later.
`Resolution`	Choice	Size of every map this run produces.
`Samples Per Pixel`	Choice	How many samples land inside each texel. More samples means smoother edges and a longer bake.
`Filter`	Choice	How the samples inside a texel get blended into the final pixel.
`Gutter Size`	Whole number	How many texels of bleed get painted outside each UV island. Set it to 0 and every seam shows a dark hairline as soon as the texture is filtered or mipped.
`Target UV Channel`	Whole number	Which UV channel on the low-poly the maps are laid out in.
`Projection Distance (Cage Offset)`	Number	How far above the low-poly surface each ray starts, in centimetres. It has to clear the widest gap between the two meshes. Too small and raised detail goes missing. Too large and rays shoot right through the model and pick up whatever is behind it, so the inside of an arm bakes the ribcage. There is no separate cage mesh to edit. Every ray starts this same distance out along the surface normal, so one number covers the whole model: where the gap varies a lot, set it by the widest part and expect skewed detail where the two meshes lean apart the most.
`Fall Back To Nearest Point`	True/False	When a ray hits nothing, take the closest point on the high poly instead of leaving the texel blank. On, a texel that missed takes the nearest high-poly point within the projection distance, in whatever direction that happens to be. It closes the small gaps a slightly tight distance leaves behind, and it can also quietly pull colour and detail in from the side. Off, only detail found along the ray counts. Anything the rays did not reach stays at the flat neutral value, so you can see exactly where your projection distance is too tight instead of getting a plausible answer from somewhere else.
`Occlusion Rays`	Whole number	Rays fired per sample. Cutting the grain in half costs four times as many rays, so this is where the bake time goes.
`Occlusion Max Distance`	Number	Anything further away than this stops casting shadow, in centimetres. 0 means no limit. Set a small value and you get contact shadows in the creases instead of the whole model darkening itself.
`Occlusion Spread Angle`	Number	How wide the rays fan out from the surface, in degrees. 180 is the full hemisphere.
`Occlusion Bias Angle`	Number	Rays that leave within this angle of the surface get thrown away. Drop it to 0 and a dense sculpt starts shadowing itself, so the map comes back speckled and dirty.
`Curvature Type`	Choice	Which measure of bending gets written into the map.
`Color Mapping`	Choice	How cavities and raised edges are turned into colours.
`Clamping`	Choice	Keep only the raised edges, only the cavities, or both.
`Color Range Multiplier`	Number	Scales the contrast range the node works out for itself. Above 1 flattens the map, below 1 pushes it harder.
`Min Range Multiplier`	Number	Anything weaker than this fraction of the range is flattened to neutral. Raise it to kill the fine speckle a scan leaves behind.
`Height Range Mode`	Choice	Whether the two distances below are read as centimetres or as a fraction of the mesh's size.
`Inner Distance`	Number	How far below the low-poly surface counts as black. Keep it negative.
`Outer Distance`	Number	How far above the low-poly surface counts as white. Keep it positive.

Learn more


Texture transfer with Mesh Morpher Graph	Read the walkthrough on meshmorpher.com	https://meshmorpher.com/blog/texture-transfer-with-mesh-morpher-graph

Available in Mesh Morpher Graph and Mesh Morpher Studio.