Edit > Convert to File Texture (Maya Software)

Converts (renders) illumination, shadow, shading, and textures to a file texture you can use as a texture map.

Convert to File Texture (Maya Software) >

NoteFor Convert to File Texture to work properly for polygonal objects, the polygons must have (UV) values, and unique (UV) values across the surface. Otherwise, the result may not be what you expect.

Anti-alias: If on, sharp, jagged edges within the solid texture are blurred or anti-aliased.

Background Mode

When converting a file to a texture, occasionally some of the pixels along texture edges are missed. As a result parts of the geometry are not properly covered and the background color shows through. In the Background Mode drop-down list, there are three options for managing this situation.

Shader Default: A default color is applied to the background. The color may be a blend of the shader colors. This option is intended for compatibility with previous versions of Maya. This is the default.
Custom Color: Specify a color to apply to the background using the Background Color field. For example, this can be useful if you want to import the file texture into image editing software and want a special key (color) to select the background for processing.
Extend Edge Color: Looks at the neighboring pixels’ colors to determine the appropriate background color to extend the texture pattern at the edges. This option provides the best quality in some situations.

TipIn the Hardware Texture Display Options window, set the Texture Filter option to a filtered method for best quality. Set the Texture Filter option to Unfiltered to see the potential artifacts.

Fill Texture Seams: If the selected UV space contains boundaries, these boundaries may appear as black stripes in renderings that use the baked textures. This occurs when the texture is sampled so close to a boundary that the filter picks up values (generally black) from outside the desired space.

This setting artificially extends the boundaries by a small amount to alleviate this problem. It is measured in texels (pixels of texture). Typically, the filter is only a few texels in diameter and can only reach as far as its radius into these boundary spaces, so a value of 1 or 2 is usually enough.

NoteThe Convert to File Texture algorithm consists of two passes by default. The first pass samples the color of the inside of triangles; the second pass extends the sampled color slightly in each direction along the polygon border to fill texture seams. Game developers, or other users who have no room for overscanning, can disable the second pass by turning the Fill Texture Seams attribute off.
Bake Shading Group Lighting: Bakes the lights that illuminate the selected surface into a new image file when you convert a texture or material into an image file. The new image file is lit by the same lights linked to the surface in the scene. (This option is ideal for color matching.)
Bake Using Virtual Plane: This option lets you create an image map for layered shaders or other non directly supported shading networks properly without having the image cropped based on an object’s UVs. This bakes out a sample image using a virtual plane with UVs from 0,0 to 1,1 square.
Bake Shadows: Specifies whether to compute shadows when baking lighting. Disk-based shadow maps are used. Only lights with depth map shadows turned on (Use Depth Map Shadows in a light’s Attribute Editor) are used.
Bake Transparency: Specifies whether to compute transparency when baking lighting. Bake transparency samples both the color and transparency of the shading network—Maya sets the alpha channel of the file texture to correspond to the sampled transparency’s result. Transparency is not computed by default.
Double Sided: Turn this option off when baking lighting or shadows. If on, normals that are needed when sampling the shading network are flipped to face the camera. (You can use this option when baking a shading network’s lighting to light both sides of the surface).

NoteTurning Double Sided on makes the conversion dependent on the camera which may be undesirable in some cases, particularly with baked lighting and shadows.

UV Range

Specifies the amount of the surface to sample in UV space. For example, if you select one or more faces on a polygonal object, instead of sampling the whole surface, only the selected faces are sampled.

NoteUV Range can be used in conjunction with selected polygonal faces.

Default: For NURBS surfaces, Maya samples the entire surface. For polygonal and SubDivision surfaces, Maya samples an area from [0,0] to [1,1].
Entire Range: Samples the entire surface (for example, a polygonal cube is sampled from [-1,0] to [2,4]). A place2dTexture node is created and connected to the file texture.
User Specified: Turn on to enable the U and V Min/Max options (see next). A place2dTexture node is created and connected to the file texture.

U Min/Max, V Min/Max: Slider values specify how much to stretch the sampling range of U or V components. Maya stretches the sample region to fit the output image size within the [0,0] to [1,1] sampling range.
X Resolution, Y Resolution: The horizontal and vertical resolution of the image file, measured in pixels. The default value is 256.
File Format: Lets you choose a format in which to save the file texture. The default is Maya IFF.

Available Image Formats

Alias Pix (als)
Cineon (cin)
DDS (dds)
EPS (eps)
GIF (gif)
JPEG (jpg)
Maya IFF (iff)
PSD (psd)
PNG (png)
RLA (rla)
SGI (sgi)
Avid^®Softimage^®(pic)
Targa (Tga)
TIff (tif)
Tiff16 (tif)
Windows Bitmap (bmp)
Sony Playstation^® (tim)