Attached Link: http://julien.chaplier.free.fr/Main.html

I was just at Julien Chaplier's site to get his address for the previous thread here at renderosity's carrara forum and saw that he has another plugin out called Baker. Looks interesting. Mike

Attached Link: http://julien.chaplier.free.fr/

Hi All, As Mike mention it, I put a new plug-in online. It's Baker and the current build is for Carrara 3. The upgrade to Carrara 4 will be free and ready as soon as the SDK is. Baker is a texture baking tool. Using the UV mapping of an object, it can extract flat texture map from any Carrara shader. Baker can also bake lightmap and normal map. Baking textures gives a way to add details and modifications on any of the Carrara procedural shaders. Its also a way to convert 3D solid texture into 2D textures that wont slip on bone-animated characters. Lightmaps and normal map can be used to lower rendering time. These maps are also very useful to enhance 3D characters modelized for video games. You can find more information on Baker on my website. Julien

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=106&Form.ShowMessage=1974691

Hi Julien did you check my last thread? I would be glad to hear back from you on new LDNM renderer idea. I want to help you make this good stuff.

thats a cool one,when i have carrara studio 4 pro i will place an order for baker and deeper,great stuff Julien.:)

Thanks Julien, the plug in that i need! I hope to see very soon a OSX version!! -TOXE

Julien I am little bit confused when shopping :) Veloute is for shader manipulation along with normal map on the model Deeper is to import normal/displacement map onto the model Baker is to bake the model's original texture map, shader, and or displacement/normal map Are those correct? Is there a way to get me notified when the ArchTool is out?

This looks interesting, although Carrara can actually convert proceedurals to texture maps (albeit in a rather buggy fashion) - you can do it by exporting an object as obj format.

Here are a few precisions regarding Baker: - It's possible to convert procedural shaders to texture map by exporting them as obj object, but when the shader is a 3D shader, the conversion can take a while. Baker does it much faster. - Veloute is a procedural shader bundle. It doesn't handle normal maps, but has a specific algorythm to create the bump mapping that makes it much better looking than the one made with Carrara default implementation. Veloute is available in demo version, you can have a look at it if you want. - Deeper creates normal map from a scene by rendering it as vectors instead of regular colors. It can then read these normal maps in the bump channel of any Carrara shader. But Deeper doesn't handle displacement map. You'll need to get Anything Grooves for that. - Baker bakes texture maps, light maps, and another kind of normal map, extracted from the surface information of the object. I know the difference beetween Deeper and Baker normal maps is not easy to grab, and the explanations I gave on the website aren't very clear, so I'll add a new page soon with more explanation on this. - I currently don't have a Mac and Codewarriors, so I can't make the MacOsX versions right now. I'll have all this arround christmass, I'm sorry about the wait, I wish I could build them sooner. I hope this answer your questions, and feel free to email me for more information.

The BIG advantage with Baker is that it creates light maps! So you can decrease the render time by almost 75% in many cases that I've tested it. Its awesome. Brian

Yes I believe that. I wonders if the light map work with GI or HDRI scene? Does the light map change everytime you move any one of objects around?

The light map is only a raytraced ligtmap. I couldn't find a way to bake GI or HDRI lighing in a plug]in. If I see a solution, be sure I'll add it to the next update. And lightmap are static images. But it could be intersting to render animated lightmaps as movies (as well as texture map and normal maps). If users ask for this option, I think I can add it. And lightmaps don't use objects arround for their computation. I think these kind of map are shadow maps. I'd like to add these to Baker in the future, but like for the GI or HDRI implementation, I can't see a way to easily do it.

I don't think GI/HDRI is any different from raytraced except the number of protons from different sources. You could build your own GI and HDRI just like you did with Baker. What you need is algorithms for light map to work with light sources in 2D platforms. It can be complex for 3D conversion to 2D light map on every objects. After you make this you will want to implement new Layers Displacement/Normal Map as other compression for renderer to cut down unnecessary polys and convert it into displacement/normal map for renderer only. Because single image is only 2D nothing more. It is very wasteful CPU resources for 3D renderer to do all the numbers to make a color pixel in the end.

I just thought about caustic, transparency, and reflector. It is alot of work to make a good Baker. So nevermind about my idea for LDNM renderer. It may take a decade to make this good renderer. Hopefully that EOVIA will take in this idea to implement with their renderer engine to fabricate objects.