Baking lighting info w/ a normal map in Maya?

ebagg · Apr 2007

I'm wondering if anyone knows how to bake information from a low poly character, with the normal mapping texture info in a lit scene, into a texture file? I'm toying with Surface Sampler, toying with the "Diffuse Map" and "Lit and Shaded Color Map" output settings and so far I'm getting black image files.

rooster · Apr 2007

hi man, I had similar problems trying to do the same with mental ray image based lighting which I still havent managed.. what renderer you using?

Rob Galanakis · Apr 2007

I've never had any problems with the Surface Sampler and Maya Software renderer (never tried it with mental ray). Just keep reading the docs and keep trying, I guess.

Daz · Apr 2007

Have you access to 8.0 ebagg? So you want the normal info baked into a diffuse texture right? I just got maya to spit this out using transfer maps (choose 'shaded' for the output map). Note that you need to make it a .tiff. Other formats dont seem to work. I haven't got access to older versions of maya so I can't try it with the surface sampler I'm afraid. But I suspect that .tiff only works for that too. Other formats set as the output map will result in black images as opposed to any kind of useful error message.

ebagg · Apr 2007

Damn Daz, that's exactly what I'm looking for. I'll have to check out 8.0, I'm working in 7.

rooster · Apr 2007

hah I guess I'll give tiff a try too lol.. nice

Whargoul · Apr 2007

You can do it with just the normal mapped low poly if you use the mental ray renderer, use the "batch bake" to do it. I did some AO mapping on normal mapped characters this way in a pinch.

Baking lighting info w/ a normal map in Maya?

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