CAN I BAKE MAPS IN NOMAD SCULPT?
Kay Miller, Cologne
Imagine you have a 3D model of a character in your software. You’ve painted details like the skin pores, fabric patterns, and even dirt smudges directly onto the surface. You may have even sculpted high-definition details too. Instead of calculating all these details in real-time, you can bake them into a map. There are all kinds of maps, but they are mostly Texture maps used for different purposes. This involves projecting the details of your 3D model onto a flat 2D image, which becomes a Texture map. It’s important to note that all models need a set of UV coordinates to be able to show these Texture maps.
Think of it as taking a photo of your 3D model from various angles and lighting conditions, and then flattening it out. The baked Texture map contains all of your painted details as if they were created directly onto the surface of your model. The real boon here is that it enables your computer to render the model faster, as it doesn’t have to calculate all the intricate details in real-time.
Another super useful map is a Normal map, which is baked in the same way. They are used to capture the surface detail that you’ve sculpted and apply it to a texture to be used in other software.
Let’s say you have a low-poly model of a rock with a simple surface. You want it to look detailed with bumps and crevices, but adding more geometry, which in turn means extra polygons, would make it too complex. Instead, you create a high-poly version of the same rock with all the intricate details you want, then you
calculate the differences in surface details between the high-poly and low-poly versions, and capture these differences as a Normal map.
The Texture map tells the rendering engine how light should interact with the surface of your low-poly model to make it look detailed and 3D, even though it’s actually quite simple. It’s a way to fake complexity without bogging down your computer with too many polygons.
In essence, whether you’re baking Texture maps or Normal maps, the goal is to optimise the rendering process by pre-calculating complex details and storing them in image files. This allows your 3D scenes to look detailed and realistic without sacrificing performance. This is a common technique on desktop computers, but we can do it just as easily using Nomad Sculpt on the ipad.