Bake
Bake is Natsura's COPs-based texture baker. It projects high-poly source geometry onto a low-poly target's UVs, producing colour, height, normal, and ambient-occlusion maps for game-ready meshes and tiling textures.
Inputs
Inputs depend on the workflow:
- Procedural growth from scans. Left input: output of Create Graft Mesh. Right input: not used.
- Tiling texture extraction. Left input: Scan to Tube or Scan to Patch. Right input: Scan to Parts.
Outputs
Baked texture maps on disk. Channels produced:
- Colour.
- Height.
- Normals. Baked in MikkT space; transfer cleanly to engines such as Unreal.
- Ambient occlusion.
Supports up to 8k resolution before memory becomes the limiting factor, super-sampling for higher quality, and seam fixing across UV island boundaries.
Modes / States
- Copernicus dive-in. Double-click the bake node to enter Copernicus and intercept the baked texture maps before they output, for colour grading, normal-map adjustment, and blending colour into specular and normal maps.
Parameters
Output
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Bake All | Triggers a bake across every enabled channel. |
| Reload Textures | Refreshes the textures from disk. |
| Directory | Where the baked textures are written. |
| Name | Base filename for the bake outputs. |
| Set Default Resolution / Resolution | Output resolution (up to 8k). |
| Format | Output texture format. |
Source Texture Overrides
Per-channel overrides for cases where the source textures should come from a path other than the default attached material.
Bake Settings
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Ray Dist | How far the bake rays extend from the target surface to find the source. |
| Ray Start Offset | Offset of ray origin from the target surface. |
| Ray Direction | Direction the rays cast in (typically along the target normal). |
| Smooth Target / Smooth Source (+ steps) | Smoothing passes applied to target and source meshes before the bake. |
Channel Settings
Top-level toggles for exporting colour, height, normal, and ambient occlusion channels.
Colour
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Source Colour Override | Override the default source colour texture. |
| Colour Suffix | Filename suffix for the colour output. |
| Path | Output path. |
| Equalize (Hue / Saturation / Value) | Per-channel histogram equalisation. |
Height
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Source Height Override | |
| Height Suffix | |
| Normalize | Normalise the height range to fit the output bit depth. |
| Height Scale | Multiplier applied before normalisation. |
| Path | |
| Geoheight | Sample heights from geometry rather than from a source height map. |
Normal
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Source Normal Override | |
| Normal Suffix | |
| Normal scale | |
| Kernel Size | Smoothing kernel size for the baked normals. |
| Path |
Ambient Occlusion
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| AO Suffix | |
| Path | |
| AO scale | |
| View Radius | How far AO rays extend. |
| Step Scale | |
| Sample Count |
Bake Processes
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Extrapolate Boundaries | Leave on for most cases. Extends pixel data outward from UV island boundaries to prevent seam artifacts. |
| Make it Tile | Used when building tiling textures from a square patch or tube section. |
Tiling
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Tiling Mode | How the tiling seamlessness is enforced. |
| Tiling Mask Preview | Visual preview of the masked region used for tiling. |
| Height Density | Influences the tiling height pattern. |
| Height Contrast | |
| Gamma |
Advanced
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
| Display Paths | Shows the output paths in the viewport for debug. |
| Override Source Texture | |
| Bake Group | Bake group identifier for multi-pass setups. |
Notes
- The bake is the boundary where high-fidelity scan or sculpt data becomes a game-ready material: it carries the high-resolution detail onto the lean target without the polygon cost.
See also: Baking (reference) · Baking for Scans · Create Graft Mesh · Scan to Tube · Scan to Patch · Scan to Parts
Atlas Wizard
Guided high-level entry to the atlas pipeline. Packages import, layout, material, mesh, and trace into a single node and gets a usable atlas in a few clicks.
Build Assembly Rig
Auto-rigging step of the assembly workflow. Produces Natsura's specific assembly rig that preserves instancing through placement and supports effector-driven posing.