Beginner, Maya default baking vs Turtle

Udjani

Ok, so i thought about use the Turtle bake, but i couldn't figure out how tu use the envelope and did no find the ''texture baking view'' either, i tried some tutorials but they are outdated as well as the '' autodesk knowledge network ''. 

Or if would be better learn an external tool like xNormals?

radiancef0rge

Use Toolbag 3

jonb84

Once Turtle is enabled change render type to Baking, then under Baking tab->Target Surfaces you can set up your usual high and low meshes, including envelopes.

In Maya, Turtle will bake textures to the standard render view. So under Texture Bake Settings, check "Save to Render View" then kick off a render when you are ready to bake your textures. There is also a check box to specify a file path to save out your baked textures.

To set up an AO bake, you must check "Custom" under your Shader Outputs then add an "ilrOccSampler" node, where you will find your AO baking settings...

Good luck with Turtle, it is much quicker at baking than mentalray in Maya and the AO baker is definitely less noisy.

Hope this helps! There are a plethora of good baking solutions out there, including xnormal, but I find it good to use a few incase you don't like the results from one of them. So in anwser to your question, learn both