Baking out a color ID map in 3ds max.

Rockley Bonner

Hi ive searched for a bit online already however I cant seem to find a tutorial on how to bake a straight color ID map. Ive baked out a color map based on diffuse color with simple colors but max bakes in shadows for some reason. Any help would be appreciated!

huffer

I usually make a Multi/Subobject with different ID's that I assign to the highres, and for each ID there's a Standard material with a full color on the diffuse (like red, cyan, magenta, etc), Specular Level set to 0, Glossiness set to 0, and under Self-Illumination the slider at 100. So no shadows, no highlights.

Revel

If you bake diffuse map, it shouldn't have any light info baked in.

Rockley Bonner

Thanks guys that worked like a charm

Mark Dygert

Like Revel said, if you use Render To Texture and set your output to diffuse map, it won't have shadows. The render preview window that pops up while max is rendering will always have shadows since it is a full render of everything in the scene but should not be used. Which is why I disable it when baking in max. The self illumination trick will technically work but it's building a bad habit.

Always check the map that it actually saved, not the window that pops up.

Eric Chadwick

Polyunwrapper makes color ID maps, and it supports UDIMs too if you're into that.
http://www.polytools3d.com/polyunwrapper/

Not free, but inexpensive for how much it improves the UV workflow.