Functionalities

The toolbar contains the following buttons:

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  Bake textures: Starts the baking process. This button becomes active only when the minimum inputs are set up (lowpoly model, highpoly model, cage).

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  Save baked textures: Saves the generated textures to files. The saving path and basename are the one provided in the Output pane. This button becomes active only when the baking process finishes.
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  Add reflection probe: Spawns a reflection probe in the scene. The probe is already configured with a custom cubemap.
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  Add light: Spawns a directional light in scene.
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  Auto position models: The system will try to automatically position/scale the input models so that they are ready to be baked. The positioning is bounding box-based. if the positioning fails and models appear in a wrong position, you can adjust them manually.
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  Recenter view: The scene view's focus will change to fit the input models.

For the low-poly and the high-poly models you have to set some values:

• Object: can be a model asset or a prefab.
• Normals: normals import type (Import | Calculate).
• Smoothing Angle: smoothing angle for smoothed normals.
• Shader: the preview material's shader (Unlit | Diffuse | Standard Metallic | Standard Specular). Click the toggle to enable/disable ambient reflections. Note that reflections will only be visible when the selected shader is one of the Standard family.
• Blend mode: the preview material's blend mode (Opaque | Cutout | Fade | Transparent)

If the import type is Calculate, then you have to set the smoothing angle.
Turning on the Auto Generate Cage toggle you can avoid providing a custom cage object since it will be automatically created from the low-poly model by vertex expansion. In this case you'll have to specify the Cage Offset.

Note:as of now, Total Baker doesn't make UV atlases for you. If your highpoly model has multiple materials, make sure they don't share UV space!

Once you set all the required objects the Update models in scene button will appear, letting you to actually load/update the selected objects in the scene. You can show/hide the cage preview by clicking on the toggle.

Bindings are a very useful system that improves bakes precision, because it allows you to bind to each cage mesh some highpoly meshes. Only the bound meshes will detect collisions with rays cast from cage meshes.

Note: to use the Bindings system correctly, the cage meshes must have unique names in their hierarchy. Same for the highpoly meshes. There's a limit of 30 cage meshes.

You can enable/disable highlights for the currently selected binding by clicking on the toggles next the “Cage meshes” and “Highpoly meshes” labels. For example, in the following image you can see the cage mesh named Railings is currently selected and the highpoly mesh named Balcony is bound to it.

The selected cage mesh is highlighted in yellow, while all the bound highpoly meshes in red.

Look at the relative tutorial for more information.

In this panel you can set up some general settings, select which maps will be baked and manage their baking options. To select/deselect a map, click on the toggle before its name.

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16 bits per channel
By default Total Baker encodes textures in a 8 bpc (bits per channel) PNG format, which is pretty good for the most cases. However, if you need better precision you can enable this option to force Total Baker to save your Height Map in a 16 bpc EXR format. Generally, you want 16 bpc when you want to convert the Height Map into a Normal Map or use it as a displacement map.

Bake normal details
If some of high poly model's materials have a normal map on them, it is possible take into account it by enabling this option. The “Building Facade” tutorial uses this option to bake the bricks.

Normals detection
This parameter lets you decide which of the following methods Total Baker will use to generate the normal map. The possible values are:

• Surface flat: Total Baker will analyze the differences between the high poly's and the low poly's surfaces. Use this method to bake unsmoothed surface normals.
• Surface smooth: Generates smoothed normals basing on the models' smoothing. This is the slowest method, but also the best in terms of output quality.
• Height: If you use this method you also force the creation of the height map even if it is not selected. The normal map will be generated by conversion from the height map. Use this if the high poly model has a lot of right angles that cause the system not detect a progressive change of surface inclination.

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AO Algorhithm:
The algorithm to be used to compute ambient occlusion. The possible values are:

• Fast: This algorithm will compute the AO map in the GPU, so it is extremely fast. However, it requires the high poly model to be uv-unwrapped so that the uv map doesn't contain overlapped triangles. Since this method computes the AO map using image operations, all its parameters have to be changed in the Filters Area
• Classic: This algorithm is based on real physics light occlusion, it can be very slow depending on its settings but it can produce very good results. The options available for this algorithm are the following

Occlusion Strength
The strength of the black component of the occlusion. A higher value will produce darker shadows.

Max spread
The maximum length of the rays used to check light occlusions. Use a higher value if you want each surface point to be occluded by far surface points. If you use a low value, only close surface points will contribute to the occlusion.

Rays Per Point
In order to compute the occlusion factor for all the surface points, Total Baker has to cast from each of them a certain number of rays. The more are the rays, the more the result is precise. Increasing the number of the rays will significantly slow down the baking process. In general, a value between 30 and 50 is enough for most cases.

Bake into diffuse
Enable this option to bake AO directly in the diffuse map. Each diffuse map’s pixel will be multiplied by the corresponding AO value. This will force the creation of the diffuse map even if it is not selected.

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Here is where you manage the output of your baked textures. The settings are the following:

Output folder
The folder used to store the baked textures. You can use both relative absolute path or relative path (to the project's Assets folder).

Base name
All the generated textures will be named [basename]_[mapname].[extension]. For example, if the base name is 'Foo' and you choose to generate diffuse and normal maps, the system will generate the files Foo_Diffuse.png and Foo_Normal.png.

Resolution
The resolution of the generated textures. Note that this is a global setting, so all the baked textures will have the same resolution.

Show Console Log
If enabled, the system will write console messages about the baking process when it finishes.

Max ray length
Max distance each ray will travel. Sometimes it may be useful to lower this value to avoid artifacts, especially when you want to bake transparent areas. As said in Get Started, Total Baker's main algorithm needs to operate in a 1x1x1 volume. That's why this option is limited to 1.

Once the baking process is completed, in this area you will see all the generated textures. In the image above, the preview shows the baked AO Map. On the top of this area you can choose which channel will be displayed and on the bottom you can select the texture map to visualize. A default checker background is displayed behind the transparent areas or when the textures aren't created yet. It's possible to pan&zoom the preview area.

A Bilinear Filtering toggle allows to enable/disable bilinear filtering. Sometimes it is useful to disable it to analyze single pixels.

After the baking process has finished, you can apply some filters to the generated maps, and this is very important to get perfect results. Each map type has different filters. Here, you can also choose if the preview is automatically or manually updated, and you can save the textures singularly.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the texture. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter. This may be useful when your UV Map contains multiple UV Shells and the downsampling of the mip maps makes the background color bleed in these areas. To get more informations on Edge Padding and UV Shells, please refer to this great article.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the texture. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Blur
Blurs the texture with a pixel-precision gaussian blur algorithm.

Brightness
Use this parameter to enlighten/darken the texture

Contrast
Use this parameter to change the contrast of the texture. A higher value will emphasize the differences between colors.

Invert Channels
Choose the channels you want to invert.

• R: If checked, the red channel of the map will be inverted. This corresponds to horizontally flip the normals.
• G : If checked, the green channel of the map will be inverted. This corresponds to vertically flip the normals.

Dilation
Expands the edges of the texture. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Denoise large details
Blurs the large details (low frequency) normal map with a bilateral blur algorithm.

Denoise small details
Blurs the small details (high frequency) normal map with a bilateral blur algorithm. This option becomes visible only if Bake normal details is set in the Normal Map settings.

Height Map Dilation
Expands the edges of the Height Map that will be converted into the Normal Map. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Height Map Blur
Blurs the Height Map that will be converted into the Normal Map with a pixel-precision gaussian blur algorithm.

Height Map Brightness
Use this parameter to enlighten/darken the Height Map that will be converted into the Normal Map.

Height Map Contrast
Use this parameter to change the contrast of the Height Map that will be converted into the Normal Map. A higher value will emphasize the differences between colors.

Invert Channels
Choose the channels you want to invert.

• R : If checked, the red channel of the map will be inverted. This corresponds to horizontally flip the normals.
• G : If checked, the green channel of the map will be inverted. This corresponds to vertically flip the normals.

Bump strength
Use this parameter to control the strength of the Normal Map's bumps.

Blur large details
Blurs the large details (low frequency) normal map with a bilateral blur algorithm.

Blur small details
Blurs the small details (high frequency) normal map with a bilateral blur algorithm.This option becomes visible only if Bake normal details is set in the Normal Map settings.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the texture. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the texture. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the texture. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Denoise
Blurs texture with a bilateral blur algorithm.

Blur
Blurs texture with a gaussian blur algorithm. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Note:the following settings will be available only if the Fast algorithm has been used to bake the AO map. Once you tweak the values a bit and see how the AO Map reacts to them, it becomes very intuitive to achieve the effect you want.

Occlusion Strength
The AO intensity. A higher value will produce darker shadows.

Sample Radius
The sampling radius. Use a high value to get larger shadows or lower it to make the shadows very close to the occluded geometry.

Bias
Controls the width of the occlusion cone considered by the occludee.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the Emission Map. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Channels
When the value of this option is Single, the resulting map will encode curvature information in gray scale. Darker colors represent concave surfaces and lighter colors represent convex surfaces. When this option is Dual, the concavity information will be stored in the red channel and the convexity information in the green channel.

Multiplier
Amplifies curvature values by this factor.

Dilation mode
You can choose whether to dilate the pixels over transparent areas (Opaque) or just the RGB channels leaving the alpha intact (Alpha Mask).

Dilation
Expands the edges of the Curvature Map. This value represents the range in pixels of the filter.

Denoise
Blurs texture with a bilateral blur algorithm.

No opions available

Input models can be actual model assets or prefabs. In fact, you may want to group objects together in a prefab and use that prefab as input in Total Baker.

For certain areas, it may be useful to prevent rays from going further. The easiest way to do this is to put in these areas some blocker objects. Blocker objects can be made of any mesh (even Unity's primitives) and must lie on Layer 0 (Default). In general, every object with that layer will be treated as a blocker object.