Baking plays a crucial role in the toolkit of a texture artist. It facilitates the transfer of intricate details from high-resolution (high-poly) models to low-resolution counterparts, significantly reducing the computational resources required. This process not only expedites the creation of certain materials and effects but also eliminates the need to repaint each iteration. For instance, when dealing with an edge wear mask, rather than starting from scratch each time, one can generate a curvature map as a foundation.

At its core, baking involves the conversion and flattening of dynamically computed 3D geometry into a 2D texture map. The resulting baked texture map acts as a static snapshot of surface properties, which can be applied to a lower-poly mesh to introduce detail within the shader.

Rendering, texturing, or animating with high-resolution 3D source data often proves computationally prohibitive. In contrast, a 2D texture map efficiently captures the same intricate details without compromising fidelity.

In this new version of Mari we now finally see this very powerful feature being fully implemented as a core function, something we previously had to resort to using 3rd part software

In this tutorial, we take an in-depth look as well as offer an alternative even more powerful solution to automate the baking and processing of baked data