Baking Ambient Occlusion

Baking Ambient Occlusion

Hello,

Total noob here, so please be gentle.

I'd like to use C3D to achieve the effect described here (using Blender) - http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com...t-with-flat-shaded-3d-in-unity--gamedev-12259.

I'm following this thread: http://www.cheetah3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9634, but don't seem to be achieving anything. Attached are some images. The first shows the radiosity tag attached to my camera. As described in the thread, my camera has 'camera light = off'. The second image shows the bake tag on my object - a simple icosahedron. The third image is the result of rendering. I would have thought that the resultant image would contain the ambient texture, but it's just white.

What could I be doing wrong?

Thanks for your help
--Jens

Hi Jens and Welcome!.
Not sure what we´re looking at your render.
Seems you forgot to hit OK at "Baking UV coords".
Leave the default "Channels" untouched - otherwise you won´t get the expected result.
Then hit the "Bake" render icon - done.

Your rendered image should look like this:
(The reason it looks "flat" is because there´s no lighting direction nor any mesh interaction.)

Cheers
Frank

PS: just realised we´re looking at a cropped image of your render manager. So just bring back the channels and hit "Bake" render again.

Thanks Frank! Your explanation and images helped.

Just a minor correction - my object is an octahedron, so what you saw was all there was.

Part of my confusion here is around terminology and workflow.

From what I had read, it seemed that (without lights in the scene) once I hit 'Bake texture' I'd get my occlusion/radiosity shaded texture. In the back of my mind I was thinking though: how is that possible without any lighting in the scene?

I think I realize now that the next (necessary) step is to add a light to the scene and then redo the 'Bake texture'. Once I do that I see that the texture is shaded instead of just monochromatic. At this point now I should be able to color and use the texture in Unity or wherever?

Am I on the right track here? I'm still a bit confused though as to why the initial thread I had referenced, and was following, was quite adamant about not having any lights in the scene initially.

Thanks
--Jens

j_factor said:

I'm still a bit confused though as to why the initial thread I had referenced, and was following, was quite adamant about not having any lights in the scene initially.

Click to expand...

Baking AO on a simple octahedron seems quite useless to me - there´s nothing exiting in terms of lighting aspects.
Try a "Fractal" object instead to see the difference immediately for instance:
And there are no extra lights required - as long you don´t miss it and "Light baking" is your goal: see second image.

Cheers
Frank

Oh! I see now. Thanks for your help.