The Bake tab controls the lightmap baking process.
ℹ️ A Lightmap is a texture that stores information about how much light reaches each part of the scene.
Path-tracing settings
Quality
Predefined values for the number of samples.
- Draft - 100 samples
- Medium - 400 samples
- High - 800 samples
- Super - 1200 samples
Samples
The number of Samples controls the number of light rays that are emitted from each pixel of the lightmap. The more samples, the longer the baking takes, and the more accurate and less noisy the result is.
Examples:
- 10 - low-quality bake to quickly detect problems with the scene
- 100 - decent draft bake
- 800 - high-quality final bake
Bounces
The number of light ray bounces that are traced for each sample. Higher values allow better illumination of dark, hard-to-reach places.
Examples:
- 3 - sufficient for most exterior scenes
- 8 - sufficient for most interior scenes
Lightmap resolution
The number of lightmap pixels that corresponds to 1 meter in the scene. Higher lightmap resolution improves quality but increases the lightmap size, baking time, and scene loading time.
Example:
- 75 - a good compromise between lightmap quality and size; it means that a 1 x 1 m square in the scene is mapped to a 75 x 75 px rectangle in the lightmap
Max lightmaps
The maximum number of lightmaps baked for the scene. If the scene cannot be packed into the given number of lightmaps, for all objects the lightmap resolution is reduced to the maximum value that allows the scene to be packed.
Examples:
- 2 - good limit for scenes intended to be viewed on mobile devices or when scene loading time is important
- 4 - sufficient for most scenes
Sky
Enables the Sky, which is a key light source that allows all exterior or interior areas with windows to be nicely illuminated. If enabled, the following sky settings can be configured:
- Strength - Sky light strength.
Examples:
- 0.8 - appropriate for most exterior scenes on a sunny day
- 6 - appropriate for most interior scenes on a sunny day - Color - Sky light color.
Ambient light
Enables fake ambient light that decreases realism but simplifies scene configuration, because light sources do not need to be added in all dark areas. Scenes with Ambient light can be baked with fewer samples. Use if baking speed or skipping the lighting setup are more important than realism. If enabled, the following settings can be configured:
- Strength - The strength of the ambient light. The higher the strength, the less realistic the baked lighting becomes.
Examples:
- 0.05 - gives slight illumination to unlit areas without a significant decrease in lighting realism
- 0.2 - gives sufficient illumination to dark areas at the cost of a significant decrease in lighting realism
Ambient occlusion
Enables fake indirect shadowing between objects by calculating how much each point in scene is occluded. The result is diffuse, non-directional shading effect that darkens areas of occluded geometry. If enabled, the following settings can be configured:
- Distance - Controls how far rays are cast to determine if a point is occluded.
Example:
- 1 - appropriate for most architectural scenes
- Intensity - The strength of the ambient occlusion. The higher the strength, the more shadowing between objects is visible.
Examples:
- 0.1 - gives slight shadowing between objects
- 0.5 - gives sufficient shadowing between objects
Post-processing settings
The post-processing settings affect how lightmaps are post-processed. After changing any of these settings, you can use the Post-process button to apply the changes to previously baked lightmaps without baking them again.
Enable filters
Enables post-processing filters that reduce noise and fix artifacts in the baked lightmap.
Flood dark limit
The threshold for the post-processing filter that masks black pixels leaking from occluded faces in the scene (for example, from underneath a picture hanging on a wall). Such black pixels are the result of limited lightmap resolution. The Flood dark limit should be increased if such artifacts are visible after baking.
Examples:
- 0.02 - sufficient for most scenes with low or medium brightness
- 0.08 - sufficient for most scenes with high brightness
Device settings
Type
Allows selection of the device used for the baking process: CPU or CUDA-enabled graphics card. High-end CUDA devices bake faster than CPUs.
Executing jobs
Bake button
Bakes the lightmap and applies post-processing filters.
Preview button
Generates a static render from the current camera position that shows how the scene is illuminated.
Post-process button
Reapplies post-processing filters without baking again. Allows the scene to be seen with all filters disabled, or is useful when tweaking the Flood dark limit setting.
Job list
The job list shows baking and post-processing jobs which are queued, in progress, or already finished.
If no job has been run since the application was started, the list is not shown.