Baker

Baker is a texture baking tool.

Using the UV mapping of an object, it can extract flat texture maps from any Carrara shader, giving then the possibility to rework it in other traditional 2D software.

You can now start shading an object with any Carrara procedural shader, either 2D (UV mapped shaders) or 3D (solid shaders) and then add details to it in your favorite 2D software.

Baker can also bake lightmaps and normal maps: rendering time can be dramaticaly lowered by using these technics usually used in real time rendering applications. These maps will also be very useful to enhance 3D characters modeled for video games.

Surface Baking, sometimes call skinning, is the transformation of an object procedural texture, lighting or surface definition into a traditional texture map. Baker adds these possibilities to Carrara.

To bake an object shader, select first the object in the scene, then choose the menu item Edit->Baking or press Ctrl+F. Note that several objects can be selected at the same time: Baker will generate as many maps as there're selected objects.

3 map types can be exported. The first one, the Texture Map, transforms one of the shader channels into a texture map. Look for example at this vase model.

Its shader is a 3D solid texture, both in the diffuse channel and in the bump channel. To transform the channel shaders into a texture map, first be sure that the UV mapping of the object is an accurate one. Baker uses the UV map to transform 3D shaders into 2D texture maps, so if the UV mapping has flaws, like overlapping triangles, these will be visible in the baked map.