Rhino 3D Tip: Bake Procedural Materials to PBR Texture Maps

Baking procedural textures converts node-based materials into bitmaps, ensuring consistent results across renderers, faster viewports, and reliable exports.

• When to bake
  • Exporting to engines or apps that don’t support your procedural nodes.
  • Locking a project’s “look” for review, collaboration, or archiving.
  • Optimizing heavy scenes for real-time and XR presentations.
  • Preparing assets for 3D printing color workflows or web viewers.
• Pre-flight checklist
  • UVs: Ensure clean, non-overlapping UVs with consistent texel density. Straighten shells when possible and keep logical packing.
  • Scale: Confirm object scale and target resolution; detail size must match bake resolution.
  • Viewport parity: Preview materials in Rendered/Raytraced; fix mapping before you bake.
• What to bake (common PBR set)
  • Base Color (Albedo): sRGB, 8-bit PNG/TIF.
  • Roughness, Metalness, AO: Linear, 8-bit; avoid gamma correction.
  • Normal (Tangent): Linear, 8-bit; verify OpenGL vs DirectX orientation.
  • Height/Displacement: Prefer 16-bit TIF/EXR (Linear).
  • Emission/Opacity as needed for special materials.
• Key settings for reliable results
  • Resolution: 2K for general assets; 4K+ for hero shots. Match to intended viewing distance.
  • Padding/Bleed: 8–32 px to prevent mip/seam artifacts.
  • Color space: sRGB for Base Color only; all other maps in Linear.
  • Tiling and scale: Confirm that procedural repeats and mapping size translate as expected.
• Workflow tips
  • Duplicate your material and bake from the copy; keep the procedural original for iteration.
  • Bake one channel at a time and review results on the model before proceeding.
  • Consolidate into a clean PBR material with the baked maps, then test in a new file.
  • Use relative texture paths and an “assets” folder for easy handoff.
• Export and interoperability
  • After baking, use FBX/OBJ/glTF with embedded or collected textures for reliable transfers.
  • If your renderer lacks a native baker, use a third-party app (e.g., Substance 3D Painter) and re-link in Rhino.
• Troubleshooting
  • Seams: Increase padding, check UV borders, and avoid extreme distortion.
  • Color mismatch: Confirm gamma settings; don’t apply sRGB to Linear maps.
  • Normal issues: Flip the green channel if shading looks inverted; verify tangent space orientation.
  • Soft displacement: Switch to 16-bit/32-bit, increase bake range, and confirm linear workflow.

Pro tip: Keep a “Baked_PBR” material library per project so teams and collaborators get identical appearance without depending on your procedural stack.

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