Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Labs Simple Baker 2.0 geometry node

SOP Based Baking of Texture Maps

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This node will Bake Geometry and Material information from a High Resolution mesh to a Low Resolution Mesh.

It is a helper wrapper around the Games Baker ROP and Bake Texture ROP in order to simplify the interface.

One main feature that the ROP version has is that you can bake several mesh pairs in the same bake. You can do this by adding more High Low Pairs on the Meshes MultiParm

Warning

The preferred node to use for baking is the Maps Baker SOP

Inputs

Target Geometry (LOW)

Geometry onto which the textures will be applied and baked into

Source Geometry (HIGH)

High Res Source Geometry that will baked onto the low res

Parameters

Resolution

Size of the output textures

Base Path

Path for the output textures. $(CHANNEL) is necessary here and will be replaced with the type of texture (basecolor, normal, etc)

Export FBX

Optionally also export the incoming model as an FBX file to this path

Channels

Vertex Color

Enable baking Vertex Colors (and Diffuse Textures) and specify the suffix

Normal Map

Enable baking Tangent Space normal maps and specify the suffix

Opacity Map

Enable baking an Opacity/Transparency/Alpha map and specify the suffix

Roughness Map

Enable baking Roughness that is sampled from the source’s material and specify the suffix

Metallic Map

Enable baking Metallic that is sampled from the source’s material and specify the suffix

World Normal Map

Enable baking World Space normal maps and specify the suffix

Ambient Occlusion

Enable baking Ambient Occlusion maps and specify the suffix

Curvature

Enable baking Curvature (Substance Style) and specify the suffix

Thickness

Enable baking Thickness maps and specify the suffix

Position

Enable baking Position maps and specify the suffix

Height

Enable baking Height/Displacement maps and specify the suffix

Custom Channels

Number of Custom Maps to be baked

Attribute Name

Point Attribute to be baked

Suffix

CHANNEL value for the texture name

Advanced

Valid Frame Range

Determines if a single frame should be baked or several frames. (Useful for baking oceans and other animated effects)

Note

If baking a frame range, make sure to remember to add a $F to your filenames, otherwise it will overwrite the same textures every frame.

Start/End/Inc

Start and End Frame, and what steps to skip

Use MikkT Tangent Space

Use the MikkT calculations to bake out the Tangent Normal Maps.

Note

The Viewport shader doesn’t have MikkT capabilities, so you might see some bruising that won’t occur on a game engine. You can use the GameDev PBR Shader in combination with the PolyFrame node if you would like to view the correct MikkT values. We understand this isn’t optimal.

Output basecolor in Linear Space

Gamma correct the BaseColor maps

Tangent Normal Flip Y

Invert the Green Channel in the Normal Map.

Disable Lighting/Emission

Ignore any lighting information. Disabling this will allow you to bake light information into your objects (just make them white)

Cage Mesh

Optional cage mesh. Must have the same topology and UVs as the UV Object. Typically a duplicate of UV Object whose vertices are slightly pushed outward. Used to determine the projection direction.

Border Padding

Additional pixels at the border of each UV island

Baking Samples

Number of Samples used for raytraced shading

Ray Bias

Determine how much to offset the rays from the surface of the object along the normal vector.

Ray Distance

Maximum Distance to trace for nearby surfaces. -1 means infinite distance.

Material

Base Color

Basic Tint on the Albedo

IOR

Index of Refraction, similar to the base PBR value of 0.04. High Values refract more light

Roughness

How rough or smooth is the specular highlight

Diffuse Map

Which channel to display as the preview map

Geometry nodes