Monsoon opened this issue on Mar 19, 2010 · 165 posts
ShawnDriscoll posted Sat, 27 March 2010 at 4:39 PM
Quote - Ah ok, i always though that normal maps contained all that information already, I love learning new stuff :D
Most 3D apps (renderers) contain that info in their material/shader settings. But each piece has to be baked out into a JPG image somhow if OBJ models are to be used in other apps. Some file format out there might transfer all this info together (included normal mapping)? But each new version of a program creates a new version of its file format that all the other programs have to incorporate into their import-export I/O (if they have a license, or if they have and SDK, or if they have hours/people in a day to code for that file format).
So baking gets the job done in most cases these days since a lot of apps are now able to part out their material/shader info separately into image files for sharing.