BA3 - Baking and Maps

"Baking, in general, is the act of pre-computing something in order to speed up some other process later down the line." - Blender Manual We use baking in 3D modelling to reduce the render time,the polygon count as well as making the texturing easier. This can be done using various maps, which are used to affect the way the light affects the model.

Diffuse: A diffuse map is essentially the coloured texture that will be applied to your object. "It wraps the bitmap image onto the geometry surface while displaying its original pixel colour".

Ambient Occlusion: What is "ambient occlusion"? It's essentially a form of non-directional object shading that's the result of background 'ambient' (bounced) light within a scene - its ostensibly based on the physical characteristic of an object and how its actual structure blocks or 'occludes' light, rather than necessarily being influenced by directional lighting in a general sense.

Specular: "Specular maps are the maps you use to define a surface's shininess and highlight colour. The higher the value of a pixel (from black to white), the shinier the surface will appear in-game." - Splash Damage

Emmisive/Glow:

Adds a glowing effect to your model. "Glow maps will blend with your original diffuse maps, so the lighter the diffuse color (or glow color), the stronger the glow effect."

Alpha:

Gives a transparent look to a model, without the additional use of polygons/removing faces. "The black part will get cut out; the white part will be fully displayed; the grey values determine the transparency (alpha) level of the object"

Gloss:

"A Gloss map is a greyscale map that describes the roughness of a surface, i.e it's Glossiness, and controls the width of the specular highlight, where a Specular Map controls the intensity (and colour if a coloured Specular Map is used).

Sources: 1.http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Render/Bake 2.http://www.katsbits.com/tutorials/blender/basic-ambient-occlusion.php 3. http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.php/Specular_Maps

4. http://pixshark.com/specular-map-texture.htm

5.http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/Help/iClone3STD/15_Multiple_Channel_Texture_Mapping/Types_of_maps.htm

6. http://eat3d.com/forum/general-discussion/simple-description-gloss-map