Quick Start Guide

Once the add-on is installed and enabled a new ‘Editor Type’ will become available (the drop down list in the top left title bar of every area) called ‘Bake Node Editor’:

_images/bakenodeeditor.png

Switch to the Bake Node Editor and click ‘New’ to create a tree. Your tree will start with the most simple bake node configuration loaded. This guide will cover this simple configuration, for details on each node take a look at the Nodes Section and for more complicated set ups hop on over to the Examples.

_images/simpleconfig.png
  1. Target: is the object you want to bake to. It must be a ‘MESH’ type object with a UV Map. A list of objects can also be connected here which would cause each object in the list to be baked with the same settings. This field must be filled.

  2. Source: is the object you want to bake from. The field is optional and if left empty the data will be taken from the target object. Most renderable objects can be used as the target and a list of objects can be connected. If multiple objects are selected then all of them will be applied to each target (if there are multiple targets).

  3. Group & Pass: selects the type of data you want to bake. Some passes will display additional options below them when selected. In the example picture the ‘Albedo’ pass in the ‘PBR’ group has no additional options.

  4. Image Path: selects where the baked image will be saved. Relative locations are supported and will be expanded on bake (Eg. Using // for the current path).

  5. Image Name: the name of the baked image. File extensions will be added automatically based on the file format unless you specify your own extension and that extension is not a recognized format. In that case your unrecognized extension will be used.

  6. Bake Image Button: will first validate the settings and then begin a background process to create the image. With default settings a window the same size as the bake editor will pop up, displaying any errors and progress information.

Most of the other settings a fairly self explanatory and can often be left at their defaults. More node types and details of each setting are covered in the Nodes Section