Baking Perfect Texture Maps Using a Cage | Blender 2.8

[@sanchitsinghal3111]

I must say best blender channel out there

[@321357w]

It's good when you make mistakes and correct them live as we can also learn how to correct them following your examples.

[@grabbitt]

Yes I feel that's important too :)

[@pablolopez6721]

very well pointing it out

[@MsPortia12]

Seriously, these videos are super well done are so helpful. I don't mind small errors or changes and editing the video is not worth it. Especially if you preview the video and take notes. It's not like 9:20 is a huge investment in time.

[@TerryMartinART]

I say that exact same thing when I make videos lol... But the partial truth is I don't have patience to edit videos.

[@foxyfujitora3868]

I know this was an old video. but I just checked it tonight and I really want to thank you, you dont know what this means to me, I've been trying to bake into normal maps for 3 weeks but never got good result till I finally learned from this video, thank you, wish you succeed more and more in this field

[@durgam_sumerian7815]

I was struggling with baking with the previous tutorials but with the Cage method, I got amazing results, and of course, it's all thankfulness for your efforts.

[@elliejohnson2786]

Honestly, I like that you show mistakes. Following tutorials sometimes gives a false impression of confidence that quickly fades when you try your own projects.

[@ferretscraze11]

I am really glad you had the same ray distance issue I had when baking because last video I was panicking but you solved it here. What a relief!

[@arvzprintingexpress7488]

I'm just one month old but I can say this is the best baking tutorial ever in baking normal maps! I understood it right away. I've seen some but not explaining the reasons/purpose of the steps.

[@1lllllllll1]

Side tip for finding overlaps: use object viewport coloring, that way the overlap area will stick out visibly.

[@G4ADStudios]

Dude, I spent like two hours jumping from video to video looking to fix that exact issue, you've saved my psychological stability

[@fredboussada8025]

Baking with a cage in Blender is something I wanted to learn, especially to get rid of baking in Marmoset (at least for now), thank you very much for the ever helpful tutorials!

[@MikeG-en1zu]

Thank you for this. I have always had difficulty getting truly good normal maps made; now I not only know the reason why, I have a ready solution. This is going to greatly improve my render times, and the overall quality of my art. Along with many of the other tutorial makers here on KZbin (CG Geek, Andrew Price, etc), your content has helped me grow; please keep up the amazing work!

[@brianbuckman6908]

Thank you my Mr Abbitt, you're a great teacher and a lifesaver!

[@froggyworld]

Youre the best. Thank you for breaking this stuff down for those of us who have virtually no idea about why these things behave the way they do.

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@anima94]

This video is a godsent, I have been trying to bake a normal map for 3 hours now and it finally worked with this

[@racheleprojects]

This video was so helpful Grant! Never quite understood how to use the Cage properly. This was very well explained. Thank you!

[@dalila2442]

Thank you so much! This is just what I needed to bake a cave normal map with no bugs

[@iamgruff]

I mean... This is golden. Thank you so much Mr Abbitt ⭐⭐⭐⭐🌟

[@brnktv]

Amazingggggggggg. Man, Blender really is a lot more user friendly than 3ds max once you take some time to learn it.

[@grabbitt]

good to hear :)

[@anaienascu9697]

Funny thing, at this point in my life I have both a blender baking issue (I need to learn it) and a baking-baking issue (There's a yeast shortage where I live).

[@tomasgarza1249]

Alt + S was the whole video for me. Thank you!

[@Captain-Cat]

Awesome. Looking forward to the cavity map vid.

[@grabbitt]

Yep on its way :)

[@dovahkriif825]

You saved my dragonslayer, and his normal texture (plus my nerves), thank you so much. sir

[@ChewTheWires]

"despite all my rage, I am still just a -rat- rock in a cage". Thanks for the tutorial grant, great stuff.

[@michaels5381]

I found out that for complex objects its better to use solidify modifier for low poly cage and after applying the modifier delete the inner portion of mesh. That way you dont need to adjust manually too many faces and the cage nicely covers the high poly.

[@grabbitt]

clever idea :)

[@OOTO.]

You're the hero we deserve and definitely need!

[@Duticyaa]

Fuck me dude this is amazing. This is basically deciding the ray distance for individual parts. Absolute legend for making this video.

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@Kholaslittlespot1]

Some days it feels like I'm really grasping Blender. Other days I feel like I have only scratched the surface! Wonder if I'll ever get good? Thanks again for your free resources. I'm a mature, self taught student who is not working, so they are very helpful.

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :) keep going and keep having fun :)

[@bluethumbbuttoneek9465]

Howd this tut go for u then

[@ProgNoizesB]

your only scratching the surface if you keep looking on youtube. All the same easy kinda tutorials. But if you ask more difficult stuff, they can't do shit. The uploader don't even show the end result which i have on my screen right now. It's horrible. He probably made that normal map from a texture and not from a mesh. I knew this was not right. Glad i use adblocker.

[@TheosResearchDiary]

haters gun hate. Thanks for the excellence Mr. Abbitt

[@Tuskajussi]

@@ProgNoizesB I did this for my shield and got a very good game object with 1k polygons and nice sculpted wood parts embedded into the normal map

[@Skeindem]

This was super useful! As I haven't used baking much before, your baking series were super useful especially this one. Used it on one of the most complicated freelance projects I've ever had :D

[@TsetTsyung]

Finally gotten round to trying High to Low Poly normals. Great video. Thanks Grant ;)

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@juancarlosbordafernandez492]

Just found this and it saved me lots of headaches trying to figure out what was going wrong with my baked textures. Thank you!!!!

[@derfmode]

I drop render samples from 128 down to 10. Then in “performance” (just below that) I change “tiles” from 64 up to 512. Now it bakes WAY faster and result looks incredible

[@jurgenvantomme]

Thank you so much for this series Grant. I'm impressed by the power of baking maps!

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@mws_3d]

You can also use Solidify modifier instead of manually scaling in edit mode. Should give good results most of the times

[@grabbitt]

That's an interesting idea

[@kloa4219]

Doesn't it create doubt the verts?

[@WhistlerDavid]

This video helped me a lot! Thanks

[@bifrostyeti]

I'm gonna try this method out I never really understood the cage option but since it can give me a perfect baked normal render like the one you've just made, I'm gonna give it a try and see how we'll it works on the model I'm making

[@gegenti]

Tks again and again! using the cage I reached a huge diferent result for my AO texture.

[@grabbitt]

Nice

[@IAmBael]

Thank you, easy to follow, covered everything I needed, and a good voice for tutorials!

[@pablolopez6721]

Very informative and clear, thank you!

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@legice]

Alt+S... I completely understood how cages work, but this shortcut is what was missing! Thank you! :D

[@petramala3916]

extremely useful. I have those *valleyball seams or football ball seams* and I hope this wil help me get rid of it. I read a lot of edvices online and none mentioned baking with a cage. BTW, it finally worked very nicely :)

[@peterpetermann1862]

good tutorial simpel and quick without any unnecessary explanations

[@grabbitt]

Thanks that's one of my main aims :)

[@RomboutVersluijs]

PS with the new tricks in bl 2.80, you can make use of the normal direction checker. If you flip the normals of the cage and than go into that view. You would clearly see item popping true because the normals are Red and Blue. Its under Overlays > Face Orientation. Quite a handy feature to use for this.

[@RomboutVersluijs]

I do hope they can some port items from baking from Blender Internal now to Cycles. Blender internal had some options which Cycles does not have. I dont see a method to bake just Vertex Colors?

[@grabbitt]

no you cant bake vertex colours any more it seems. I will try the normal's direction checker in future :)

[@RomboutVersluijs]

@@grabbitt I think i read something about using an attribute node. Perhaps it can be done that way. Im not sure if they would take such a feature out. It is possible, see here blender.stackexchange.com/questions/45964/how-to-bake-to-vertex-colors-in-blender-cycles

[@grabbitt]

@@RomboutVersluijs ah yes that makes sense I wonder how different this is from the pointiness node?

[@RomboutVersluijs]

@@grabbitt i find it weird that its a bit hidden. While BI engine it was dedicated option.

[@nebobyeoli]

God thank you so much for this! I was really searching for an understandable explanation and example about how ray distances work just like you did at 1:11... be blessed♥

[@grabbitt]

Thanks 😃

[@theunaimedarrow4903]

Great tutorial. My system isn't baking quickly, and messing with Ray distance was killing me. Cage worked and quickly.

[@AuxiarMolkhun]

Blender was giving me some difficulties with this that I'll explain here, including how I fixed it, in case anyone else runs into the same issue. I was following the tutorial step-by-step with no issues until it got time to actually bake the map. For whatever reason, I kept getting the error that the Cage object had a different number of faces than the Active (low-poly) object, and so it wouldn't do the bake, even though I made doubly sure that I duplicated the low-poly mesh and just scaled it up. No modifiers, no editing other than that. I was still getting this error though. Restarting Blender didn't fix it and reduplicating the low-poly mesh to make a new cage didn't seem to fix it either. What did fix it, is whenever I tried to bake it backwards. Instead of selecting the high-poly mesh first and low-poly mesh second, I instead selected them backwards and attempted the bake. Ironically, it went through, though obviously with unwanted results. Seeing as it worked this time, I decided to reselect them in the correct order and re-attempt the bake. Lo and behold, it actually worked with no Blender errors. I hope this really odd issue doesn't bug anyone else, but if it does I hope that my fix works for you too. Happy Blending.

[@grabbitt]

very interesting.

@@grabbitt I have the same problem. Blender gives a warning as low and hig poly mesh must be same numbers. Is there any way to fix it? I just followed the video and the result is as I mentioned. It just gives a warning and not finishes the nomal baking.

[@grabbitt]

@ i think you are trying to use a cage - your cage must have the same polycount as the low poly

@@grabbitt This time it is close to perfect 👍 There are some glitches but I know why are they and I can handle it easly. The big thing is I really understand the baking 😊👍 Thank you Grant Abbitt 🧡👍 After having a good baking as quaick as possible I tried texture painting but where I paint with brush it paints the other side. Is there a way to fix it?

[@FireBert85]

I think I figured out a weird quirk with Blender. If you are clicking objects with the outliner, it seems that the object you click First is your Active Object, and it stays that way no matter what you click next. However, this is reversed when clicking the same objects in the same order from within the 3D Viewport---there, you will get the second object clicked becomes the active. (v 2.83a) I tried this until my eyes bled to make sure I wasn't going crazy, watching how the object names changed colors to indicate which was active vs selected

[@zardify_]

Fyi, these types of cages have since been implemented in Blender under the "extrusion" setting in the bake options. :) you only need a cage if your geometry is complex. Maybe even concave.

[@NoSeQuePonerAaa]

I didn't understand nothing because my english is very bad, but it worked, and I don't know why, thank you for doing this tutorial :D

[@v124entkl9]

*3:48 I recomend using a displace modifier. But other than that great video

[@grabbitt]

yes makes sense

[@soroush0700]

Thank you man

[@BreakMaker2904]

Unnfortunately, I have encountered an issue that makes the inflated cage approach as introduced in the video unusable. When I use alt+s (shrink/fatten) to scale the cage along the normals, some vertices and faces get deleted! My low poly has 66 307 faces, when I fatten the cage so that it covers the entire high poly model only 66 305 faces remain! As a result, when I want to bake it stops with an error that the poly count must be the same... Any ideas, Grant, how to go about this? Using "max ray distance" gives bad results, because the high poly sticks out from the low poly.

[@grabbitt]

i've no idea why that would be sorry

[@MarkoDijan]

I just encountered the same problem. The thing was that my "Auto Merge Vertices" was ON and while scaling some of the vertices came too close and merged. Check if you did the same mistake and just turn it OFF. That should solve the problem :)

[@uodige1]

Thank yoU!,, this resolved the issue I was having with baking high res to low res map

[@1lllllllll1]

Awesome tutorial, even better than blender guru!

[@grabbitt]

Thanks

[@Beaxim]

Top of the Top!

[@王永昌-z4o]

thank you to share the video,I understand the useful of cage.I notice that the "ray distance",may I ask this para work outside and inside the lowpoly ?or just outside the low poly?

[@grabbitt]

outside the high poly

[@willdebohun7028]

Had huge difficulty with this until I realised that in 2.9 the last selected mesh from the list doesn't become active and I had to pic it from the 3d view - thanks for all your awesome videos

[@grabbitt]

yes the outliner has changed slightly i think

[@sebas_xs]

This tutorial was awesomeee, just what I was looking for, thanks!

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@Xenozoology]

This technology man ahaha. like go fgures we have to build a cage around light to set up a paremeter. - But i was thinking. In reverse, couldn't you bake in the negative direction? So your HPoly is larger than your LPoly retopo mesh and you direct the textures on the Hpoly faces down, (shrinking them a bit also ) unto the LPoly Retopo mesh? So in essence you build your retopo not around or above your HPoly mesh but within it, so it is slightly smaller. That way there are no curvatures that don't overlap strangely or not at all.

[@KUBE.archvis]

Absolutely beautiful tutorial! Thank you, thank you!

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@prod.bywwhateva]

I have noticed if my low poly mesh is too low poly it will create weird jagged shadows. It took me a good hour to realise what went wrong with my bake. But on the end subdividing helped me out.

[@grabbitt]

Yeah that's more s lighting issues than mesh issue

[@1lllllllll1]

Taking a personal note for reference: alt+s is for scaling via normals, then shift is for increasing mouse sensitivity on the scale operation.

[@karraryahya8496]

Many thanks

[@sunnyup2352]

Thank you very much Grant, I was waiting for that 😁👍🏻

[@grabbitt]

:)

[@lucashaymaker5927]

Omg this is what I needed! xDDDD

[@ulus2109]

The same principle of baking in 2.8 can be used for AO & height maps I guess?

[@grabbitt]

yes

[@guidodingemans]

Hi Grant, thank you for another excellent tutorial, extremely helpful! My normal maps look much better when I use cages. Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but does the size of the cage actually matter? Like, the tighter it fits around the other meshes, the better? Or will the results be the same, no matter how tight or loose the cage fits?

[@grabbitt]

Tighter fit is more accurate

[@guidodingemans]

@@grabbitt Thanks for replying, much appreciated!

[@RomboutVersluijs]

DId you already have time to look at the addon "Bakemyscan"? I had some issues gettting dynamesh to work on osx, but that is solved now. The cool thing about Bakemyscan is that you got quit some opions to do the remeshes. But it can also super asily do you bakes etc etc.

[@grabbitt]

interesting i will have to look that up :)

[@seanposkea]

I've been playing with Displacement, but when I use them my PC really chugs and it rarely does. For static renders, and/or arch/viz walkthrough animations are Displacement maps more efficient or is it faster/better to just have a high-poly mesh? The latter seems to be the case to me but I could be doing something wrong. Thanks

[@grabbitt]

Displacement maps are better in some way but it still requires high poly

[@kray3d]

When baking, you dont need to unwrap the high poly one correct?

[@grabbitt]

indeed

[@cabreram.4734]

There's no uv unwraping needed for Hp or LP? Edit: sorry, I jumped the gun😅

[@draskang]

It's nice to know the basics of cage projection, but tbh, you really should be showing this on a character where you have to project into a mouth, in arm pits & between fingers.

[@grabbitt]

It would be tough for people to follow along

[@lyonixx9886]

Great video^^ but since I switched from 2.79 to 2.8 I don’t longer have the Ray distance option :D?

[@grabbitt]

i need to look into that actually

[@lyonixx9886]

@@grabbitt I´m stupid... I didn´t expanded Selected to Active :D

[@MZONE3D]

Perfect thanks grant

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@Numocron]

This is an awesome Blender tutorial I love it. :D

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@Numocron]

Grant Abbitt You're very welcome. :)

[@skilat193]

Can we use a shrinkwrap modifier first or it's better to don't do it for a cage ?

[@grabbitt]

Yes that works as well

[@loomissimool8070]

I don't know if someone met my problem too, but: if there is a more complex object than a rock, something like a human body, is there a quicker way for pushing out all the cage whithout select all the faces? it's a bit tricky to cage a complex model and im struggling for days searching an easer way, i still have not found it.

[@grabbitt]

Alt s scales by normals

[@loomissimool8070]

​@@grabbitt Thank you, my Regards :)

[@fragarena9910]

short and sweet :D super useful

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@apemant]

Thanks! Not easy, but it's doable. Just make sure your objects are smooth shaded (rightclick in Object mode -> Shade smooth), or you will get weird creases, at least that worked for me on my mesh (a damaged concrete wall). EDIT: If the normal map is going to be displayed on a smooth shaded mesh it should be baked on a smooth shaded mesh; and vice versa: bake on flat shaded if it will be displayed on a flat shaded object. This because the tangent space basis must be exactly the same.

[@karl-heinz7390]

thank you so much for this video 🙏🙏🙏🙏I was about to throw my whole project away because my normals wouldn't bake right

[@imatree4015]

Do you know when 2.8 will be put fully? And great video too.

[@grabbitt]

for some reason i have June/ July in my head cant remember where i heard that though

[@adelinacool]

I've been trying to use this method to make normals for a big object (make out of multiples ones that i joined together) but for some reason, I don't get normals for like half the stuff in the scene. any suggestions?

[@grabbitt]

could be a number of issues but mainly check face direction

[@jonj4040]

I keep getting a circular dependency error using this method. I have used it on other objects successfully but now I don't know what the issue is.

[@grabbitt]

it should still work. if not unplug the texture

[@leaphymoon9881]

Do you know how I would bake other textures? I have textures and an entire node tree modifying the texture behind it. Is it possible to bake that? Thanks for the tutorial, hard to find ones as good as yours

[@grabbitt]

Yes it's possible to bake all textures i believe apart from animated ones. Search baking on my channel and it should come up with the other tutorials I have created on the subject

[@tris0913]

baking hard surface textures for substance painter (NOT MESH just the painting normals): deselect 32bit float and leave at sRGB

[@chrissem5200]

Hi. Do you know why my normal map have some blury spots in it and why it has a blury streched outline which isnt a part of the texture map.

[@grabbitt]

Not sure. Does it work when you put it on your object?

[@auronkelly6594]

Hi Grant. I have a high poly brick that I want to bake the displacement of. I have blender 2.82. Is this possible? And if so . . . Any chance of a tutorial?

[@grabbitt]

haven't done that for a while so would have to look into it

[@drjarman]

Hey! Great Tut Grant! I'm wondering about an issue im having while following along. When baking, both my objects (HP and LP) are shaded smooth but when the Normal map is generated and then applied to the LP model the shading seems flat/sharp. Any ideas?

[@grabbitt]

that's a new one for me. have you got any doubles on your high res?

[@drjarman]

@@grabbittThanks for the reply! Blender just needed a restart. Not sure what the issue was. Thanks for your help! I look forward to your next tut :D

[@Xenozoology]

Is it normal that the baked textures come out as 2D textures on your retopo? The cage worked succesfully in almost all ways but i realized it was 2D. When i did the baking without cage i got many glitches in the bake following ray distance, i tried a few, but it also seems to make it all 2D.

[@grabbitt]

Baked textures are all 2d

[@imaginaryworld4732]

Do you know how to turn off polygon highlights when selecting verts or edge? Thanks

[@grabbitt]

I'm not sure what you mean

[@imaginaryworld4732]

@@grabbitt Create a plane with one face without loops. When select all 4 verts on plane, the polygon looks like it was selected with box selection. I mean everything is highlighted (verts, edge, poligon) How to make only verts highlighted ? Like in Maya, Max.

[@amini011]

been on this for the whole day, after this tutorial things have been going slightly better but there's still a weird issue where some part of the mesh gets darker and I don't get it.

[@grabbitt]

Amy part of your high poly that goes through you cage will not work

[@amini011]

@@grabbitt I'll try again today with a closed mesh, previous ones had holes in the back, might be why it was failing.

[@Strelokos666]

time passes but I still didn't get the correctly baked normal map, it's either all messy (better than without cage tho) or simply doesn't update. I just can't imagine how everyone around do this correctly, if there's something I missing?

[@grabbitt]

Check the have direction and doubles

[@AugustRenders]

For some reason, the "cage" thing isn't working for me...

[@dalibormitrovski8303]

How to check the number of polies in 2.8 .... They dont show on the top?

[@robinnico7564]

it's on the bottom

[@grabbitt]

wot he said :)

[@SupremeIntentionCrew]

But what about 1 dimensional objects ? for example a feather or some leaves ?

[@grabbitt]

Yes that's ok

[@grabbitt]

Yes that work too

[@virginijasileikiene1989]

nice tips. Thank you!

[@grabbitt]

Thanks :)

[@studiodlc5744]

thanks!!

[@saturn_jupiteruranus_neptu5827]

Not sure why but my cage still isnt baking my normal maps properly. I've made sure everything was ok too...

[@grabbitt]

Check normals

[@MZONE3D]

Superb cheers mate

[@grabbitt]

thanks :)

[@shssaykhaserith5111]

I ran into an odd issue when I tried this technique. When I created my cage and scaled it up, I lost faces. O_o I’m not sure how, since I’ve only used alt + s to scale and pulled out individual faces. But I can’t get the cage to work because once I scale it doesn’t have the same amount of faces as the low poly model. Anyone have any ideas why this would be happening? I’m completely stumped.

[@grabbitt]

not sure about that one it's very difficult to say what happened

[@mold9879]

Strangely, I had this same issue in Blender 2.80, but then updated to Blender 2.81 and no longer had the same issue. If I had to guess, maybe scale by normals has a bug in 2.8?

[@BoboTheImp]

Any particular reason you used Alt+S instead of just scaling the cage? Does it have to do with the origin?

[@grabbitt]

Alt s scales on the normals if you have a more complex object it makes more sense.

[@levelchanger468]

Please, somebody tell me, why baking is required? Is it necessary in all the cases of modeling ? I'm a nube... Thanks in advance...

[@grabbitt]

check my video on how to make models for game and film

[@levelchanger468]

@@grabbitt thanks sir.