Vertex Bake Set

Vertex bake set attributes

Color Mode

Determines the baking mode for the scene. Select one of the following:

Light and Color: Bakes light and color information.
Only Light: Bakes only lighting information.
Only Global Illumination: Bakes only global illumination information
Occlusion: Bakes occlusion information.
Custom Shader: Bakes the specified custom shading network into the bake set.

Occlusion Rays: Determines the number of occlusion rays to trace per sample point. Increasing the number of occlusion rays improves quality, but reduces performance speed. The default is 64.
Occlusion Falloff: Determines the maximum length of an occlusion ray. Rays longer than this value are not considered for occlusion.
Custom Shader: Use the new Custom Shader attribute to connect a custom shading network to your bake set.

To use this attribute, Color Mode must be set to Custom Shader, then you can map the Custom Shader field to the shading network.
Normal Direction: Use the Normal Direction drop-down list to set the direction of the baked object’s resulting normals. Select from Face Camera (towards the camera), Surface Front (outwards from the object surface), and Surface Back (inwards from the object surface).
Orthogonal Reflection: This option is on by default. When turned on, the Orthogonal Reflection option causes all reflection rays to be orthogonal to the surface being baked. They are no longer true reflection rays, pointing instead parallel to the surface normal vectors, but the resulting baked texture or vertex colors are meaningful when viewed later from any direction. This option should be turned on if the textures or vertex colors generated are to be used as textures in a game engine.

Turn this option off if you are baking in order to accelerate software rendering and the reflections are only viewed from the baked position. However, in this case, the textures or vertex colors generated are not for use as textures in a game engine.
Create New Color Set / Color Set Name: Use this option to indicate the color set that you want to bake to.
Bake Alpha: Turn this option on to bake the alpha channel (equivalent to Maya’s Bake Transparency option). When this option is turned on, you can set Min Alpha and Max Alpha values, and the Alpha Blending method. This attribute is off by default.
Bake Color: Turn this attribute off when you do not want to bake the color channel. When this option is on, you can set Min Color and Max Color values, and the Color Blending method. This attribute is on by default.
Scale Rgba: Scale vertex colors by the specified value.
Clamp Min, Clamp Max: Turn on these attributes to clamp the minimum and maximum color and alpha values so that the values are forced to be within the set range.
Min Alpha: The lower clamp limit for the alpha channel.
Max Alpha: The upper clamp limit for the alpha channel.
Min Color: The lower limit to which to clamp vertex color.
Max Color: The upper limit to which to clamp vertex colors.
Color Blending: Merges existing vertex colors with the ones just baked, if any. Select a merge method from the Color Blending drop-down list.
Alpha Blending: Merges existing vertex alphas with the ones just baked, if any. Select a merge method from the Alpha Blending drop-down list.

Vertex Color Filtering

Filter Size: If final gathering is baked to vertices and the scene contains high frequency information, discontinuities in the color channel may become visible. This artifact becomes especially apparent if low final gather quality settings are used. Filtering baked vertex colors yields the desired smooth look.

Provide a small positive filter size as argument to this parameter (it is multiplied by the object's bounding box size to obtain the absolute size). Set the Filter Size value to -1 to turn filtering off. Set the value to 0 or larger to turn it on.

Start with values in the 0.1 range as this value is multiplied by the object’s bounding box size to obtain the absolute size. This process also allows smaller values to be used for the Accuracy attribute in the Render Settings: mental ray tabs (Indirect Lighting tab > Final Gathering section) for faster performance although accuracy of results may need to be taken into account.

Lower final gather quality settings require larger filter sizes to get a smooth look and renders are less accurate. In general, the final gather quality should be raised as long as rendering times are acceptable; then the filter size should be increased until the desired smooth look is obtained. A tiny filter size may suffice; it enforces that baked colors are shared at vertices which have identical positions and normals.
Filter Normal Tolerance: The filter normal tolerance in degrees (0 to 180).

This lets you adjust the angular tolerance for smoothing value across faces.

Vertices whose angular separation is greater than the entered value are not taken into consideration for filtering so that crisp transitions are maintained across hard edges, and undesired color bleed doesn’t occur.

After adjusting this option, repeat the prelight operation to test. When a fairly smooth result is obtained, use the Filter Size to adjust further.
Use Face Normals: Use this option when you want to specify the use of face normals for baking instead of interpolated vertex normals (the default used for rendering). This option is off by default, and was previously found in the mental ray Baking Options (Batch Bake) dialog box.