dumb question, how to bake viewport highlight?

maze

Hello,

I am trying to do some low res crystal shapes in 3ds max, and wanting to bake the default 3ds max highlights into my texture to fake lighting, is this possible?

Thanks in advanced.

Mark Dygert

Rendering out a complete map should do it. If you want shadows seperate from your diffuse and spec maps you can apply a white material to your object with spec at 0 then render a complete to get AO. Then render out diffuse and spec expertly.

The problem is, the lighting will change every time you move the viewport. You are probably better off just setting up a simple light and a camera, in case you have to re-render it at some point.

All the viewport lighting is, is a camera and a omni light that is always hidden, it follows the viewport camera wherever it goes.

joebount

Maybe talking about AO baking here ?

JamesWild

Yeah, a complete map will bake out pretty much exactly what you see in the render window so light the scene as you want it to look, bake a complete map and stick it on your mesh as an emissive/glow with no other maps.

This is from when I made a guitar+amp for Fallout New Vegas, the light in there is all baked. (though in this case added over the top as an additive blend, not a great way of doing it)


Many people follow the generic "place a skylight, light tracer, render to texture" tutorial without actually realizing what it is they're doing. That you can put any lights you want in there.

maze

hey guys sorry for the laaaaate update!!! Thanks a lot.

Well actually I am doing some very low res props for a "fake" gps navigator to be used in a theater simulation journey... is for an augment reality project (documentary) a client is doing on a theater. And basically I was tasked to build low res props like and old video game as there will be a small part of the screen that would act like a small "navigator gps"

and the rest of the theater screen will be some high res matte paintings with a narrator voiceover.

So first off, I thought of texturing each prop...etc, but my client really wanted something ultra simple as a look, just to see the shaded facets with some small texture treatment and some noise. So then I simply wanted to bake the default lighting shading of the facets on a texture map.

I am attaching an image, so as you see its very simple shading. I tried faking it by painting in texture, but for something that simple, I wanted to know If I could simply bake it into a color map. thanks

Macattackk

all you need to do is make it look however you want in the viewport and then render to texture and youll get that. you can also render out specific parts like the specular to get only highlights, but youll have to set up the specular to show in the viewport

vreza

well the viewport lighting is basically a direct light with no shadows. so I think for more reliable result u need to use a direct light. adjust the angle as u wish and bake the complete map.