I'm a bit lost with the baking process
I'm currently baking pothead's companion and the baked layers are coming out blurry or pixelated. I've tried baking in 4k and have also tried in 8k, but both of those are worse than what I have prior to baking.
The image texture from when I texture painted the model is fine, but the added image textures (all the scratches and other images applied) lose their quality.
I must be missing something. It's the same with the roughness and bump bakes too. The bump is super pixelated, even when selecting 32bit and following the steps Jonathan does when saving the file. I also have an issue where the UV seams are super obvious (and pixelated). I tried messing with the margin value and that doesn't seem to do much.
Any pointers as to where I might be falling off the track?
I'm going to have another go today and see if I can get it to work
The first image is with the 8k baked colour map pugged in, and the second is without any baking done;
Tried changing the graf images to the 4k versions, but that didn't fix anything. I mean it looks better than the 1k versions, but it's still blown out
Redid the baking in 8k and it comes out at a reasonable result. I might just be too ambitious with hoping to have the baked result as it appears prior to baking?
However, I still have the issue with my uv seams being baked in - they're better resolution now that I baked it in 8k lol, but they're still there. I thought it might be the seam margin value but that didn't do anything
I think I've found the culprit. I zoomed in on the uv map and can see that the seam falls too directly on the baked image (I've forgotten the correct terms so here's a screenshot). Which I guess explains why I'm getting a pixelated seam showing up?
Hi Harris,
(straight line) Seams should be as vertical or horizontal as possible in the UV Map, to avoid this kind of Aliasing/Pixelation.
Doesn't explain the Pixel Size being too large though....
We have had a question here from someone with 'the same' problem and in that case, it turned out to be caused by Compositing Nodes, so I'd check that if I were you.
For the rest, it is really hard for me to troubleshoot. Hopefully someone else has a better idea as to what could be the issue.
Cheers 
spikeyxxx That's an absolutely valid point about the orientation of the uv islands! I completely forgot about it when I did them, and it makes absolute sense.
I still haven't been able to ultimately deduce why I'm having issues with the pixel problems. I have been unsure what resolution to set the udim tiles to - so it's been a bit of back and forth while testing things out. The texture paint image is 4k, whereas I have other images (scratches and other texture images, as well as the graffiti images) that are between 1k and 4k. I suppose the smaller res images are being blown up to match the 4k baking images. I suppose its a matter of finding a happy medium. I also read online it's best to (it does, however, depend on the situation) to set the image files for baking to match the resolution of what you already have.
I have a couple of notes that I'll keep in regards to the next project I work on. Namely being to use lower res images while working on the project for the sake of performance, and them swap them out for the higher res variants when it comes to baking.
I found that the issue with the seams could be resolved by changing the margin type in the render properties to 'extend' - per the attached image (I let out a huge woohoo when I figured that out :P ). I don't know if it was set to Adjacent Faces by default or if I changed it at somepoint without knowing what it does.
All this being said, however, It's been a tough few days with baking and I've felt rather defeated when it didn't work the first few times. But I find the best way to learn how to fix problems is to make them in the first place!
I'm almost at the end of this, I've been working immensely on Noodlehead since I started the pothead course in Feb. Super keen to upload it when it's finished!
I think I may have worked out why my normal map is looking super pixelated in some materials. I found that I've unfortunately got bump nodes with different strengths and distances (Note to future self: work with a single bump node across the entire model). When the normal map for the whole model was plugged into a bump node with STR:1 and DIS:0.1, it was sending the materials that had smaller values into mayhem ( I would have lowered the strength initially as it was too high and looked too intense). I'm going back through each of my materials and trying to equalise the values that differ from the norm - so they work as intended when plugged into a single bump node at the end... if that makes sense
Is there an easy way to do this?
spikeyxxx I rebaked the bump map. I tried doing so at 8k and making sure the colour space was set to non-colour/linear, also set it to full float and used 32bit etc etc. I went back through and balanced out my bump values so they can all pass through the one bump node. Unfortunately it looks rather awful, a little better than the first time, but still not good at all!
I did have a thought, at some point in the process I scaled up the model slightly as I realised it was too small in comparison to pothead. I can't remember if this was before or after I started texturing it. If I scaled the model up after I had done the texture painting, would that cause it to become more blurry/pixelated?
Everything is fine and looks great - until I bake it.
I'm at work at the mo' so I can't upload screenshots, so I hope I'm making sense!
I'm also trying my best to wrap my head around what's causing these issues, but I might have to upload my file to get someone to have a look.
Hm, I don't expect the Scaling having an influence on the Baking result, but I can't be sure.
I suspect it has something to do with the UDIMs, but I haven't used them myself yet, so it is also just guessing.
Maybe it's a bug, or maybe you're doing something wrong (Baking is very error-prone...I am not a religious person, but I always pray before I click the Bake button).
If you decide to upload it, I'll be happy to take a look, I don't think screenshots will be enough to troubleshoot in this case.
Hah, a friend of mine works at a vfx studio here in town. I told him I was about to start baking my materials and he wished me luck. At the time I didn't understand why he said that...
I'll upload it tonight. I've packed the resources into the file. However it's currently sitting at 962mb. Is that going to be too big of a file to work with?
It was twice that at about 1.7gb but I went through the library and deleted orphan data (had a number of unused 4k images rip)
Cheers, the file is uploading now. I'll post a link when it's ready
Here's two files.
The first file has all of the materials prior to plugging in the baked images, and the second file has a 'master' material used across the model with the baked images plugged in and some of the materials are left as outliers as they have additional effects attributed to them.
In the outliner you'll find collections coloured yellow. They're for the different major parts of the model (eg: front left leg, radiator, vending etc). Within those are pink collections, they've got the respective decals per model part (I added the decals/stickers after unwrapping everything and I wasn't able to bake those). The blue collections are the empties that control each of the grafitti images - they're made redundant in the second file as the grafitti is baked to the colour image.
Also in the first file, you'll see that there are materials for the left and right side of the body (as well as a few other sections of it). I did it this way as this was where I was running into issues with my materials turning black. I found by separating the body into different materials for the left and right etc I was able to remedy this as a work around.
In the second file, the bump map is particulary glaring in the bottom section of the body (where the legs plug into), as well as the green and red foam padding around the bull bars and in the legs and on the engine.
Let me know if you find any solutions as to where I may have gone wrong! I had a thought that maybe certain UV islands might not actually be big enough which could be why they don't have enough resolution - but I'm not entirely sure.
Thanks again Martin, I really appreciate it!
File 1:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0442f62r3xybwxxmxadb7/Noodlehead_Packed.blend?rlkey=0258fab7i9lvywo4i2ti8jbx4&st=gd9o0v2z&dl=0
File2:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/8qavkhk8mzjuxye65dzti/Noodlehead_Baked_Material_Packed.blend?rlkey=l1rhhma3k5txoyxuwgey53064&st=skafgbdj&dl=0
Hi Harris,
I haven't been looking at this as long as you have, and (as well-organized as your file is) I don't have complete knowledge of what is what and so...And I also don't know exactly where to look , but from first glances, I cannot find any problems.
Here's a comparison (sorry I didn't get the viewing angles identical) of the two:
Versus:
There seem to be some decals missing on the second one, but as far as graffiti and so are concerned, I don't see too much difference (again, I don't know where to look exactly...)
Also, regarding the sixth tile in the udim images... ignore what I've done. I'm aware it's an absolute waste of space/data/what have you. I did have uv islands taking up most of it that were for the noodle cups inside the vending machine. I had initally envisioned that I'd be able to design my own packaging to wrap around the cups, but quickly realised that it was unnecessary would take more time. I ended up deleting the geometry after I found a perfect set of noodle cups on blender market. The uv islands that are in the 6th tile are for such a small component inside the vending machine. I could reposition them to an earlier tile and quickly repaint them - I'd then just need to rebake everything, which to be fair is absolutely doable
Cheers Martin,
I must have turned off the decals in the second file (with the 'master' material that has the baked bump map).
If i'm correct, the first image you've posted is from the second file? And the second image is from the first file?
The issue i'm trying to work out is why the bump map is looking pixelated - in comparison to the second image you've posted.
Here's some examples of specific differences where a lot of bump detail has been lost after baking!
Lost detail after baking:
Detail that was there prior:
Lost detail
Detail prior
From further back, most of the bump detail seems to look alright. And ultimately it is up to me how close I position the camera when rendering.
Perhaps I'm being too ambitious, it's just these more apparent issues that I'm trying to resolve
Cheers
I've just been reading into texel density here.
And I've just watched this video from Chunck's Relic course.
I'm becoming more suspicious of the fact that perhaps I didn't scale my uv islands appropriately (I did the unwrapping a good few months ago I believe). I could be losing texture to the pixels resolution.
I'm sure I've heard Jonathan discuss texel density somewhere within one of the fundamentals courses (Probably the texturing course). Perhaps after I finish the pothead course I'll go back and finish it...