The Maps Baker HDA allows you to very quickly bake texture maps through either custom attributes, texture reprojection, or generation. Provide the tool a low-poly mesh, and a high-poly mesh and bake from one to the other. This tool is a lightweight baking solution similar to the other solutions, but instead fully written in COPs using VEX. It is EXTREMELY fast. Mesh + Material used in example is property of Quixel Megascans. https://quixel.com/assets/tdlhad1da

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Transfer Maps

One of the primary functions of the Maps Baker is to do texture reprojection from one mesh to another. The built-in maps are Diffuse, Normal, Opacity, Roughness and Metallic. The tool currently only supports materials based on the principledshader::2.0, or the GameDev QuickMat.

Generate Maps

The tool is also able to generate new maps from pure data stored on the geometry. Maps such as Vertex Color, AO, WorldNormal, Height, Alpha and Position. But this can also very easily be extended by using the Custom Attributes multiparm, which can have as many custom channels as you would like. The advanced tab allows for tweaking settings such as AO.

Speed!!! & Customization

The maps baker is not your ordinary baking solution. The tool has been fully implemented in COPs through VEX, meaning it is extremely fast.. And also allows for very easy customization. If for example you would like to always multiply your vertex colors by AO, you would just need to wire two nodes together and you're done!

CREATED BY

Ambrosiussen
PAUL AMBROSIUSSEN

Paul Ambrosiussen is currently a Technical Artist at Bismuth Consultancy. He was the Lead of the Labs initiative at SideFX before that. Paul finished his BASc in International Game Architecture and Design at NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda. Paul enjoys writing tools to support effective art-pipelines, and maintaining tool / workflow quality for the artists he is assisting. His goal is to help others create amazing things in a better, faster and more flexible way. He creates tutorials, gives live lectures, attends events, and presents custom workshops to customers.

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