Bake Objects

With this function, changes in position, scale and rotation that were not necessarily made using the P, S, R keys (but using an Expression or other object, etc.) can, for example, be converted to real position, scale and rotation tracks.

It does not matter if the animation is created using few or interpolated Keys, via a Vibrate Expression or using a Constraint (or even an Alembic object). Regardless of how the animation was created, this function will create one Key per animation frame.

So, what is this good for? This function can be useful whenever you want to export an animation, whether to another application (e.g., to a previous version of Cinema 4D that does not support Constraint tags or a Dynamics animation) or for rendering using Team Render (e.g., a network containing differing versions of an application).

Select the objects you want to bake in the Timeline and execute the Bake Objects command. A dialog window containing the following options will open.

The Baking process can be cancelled by pressing the Esc key on your keyboard.

Start / End

Use these settings to define the frame range in which the object should be baked. If no new values are entered the entire project length will be used by default.

Bake Expressions

Activate this option to bake animations that were created using such tags as Constraint, Vibrate, etc.

Create Copy

Defines whether a copied object with baked tracks should be created or the active object's animation should be overwritten.

Remove Tags

If you want to create an object copy with baked Expression tag effects, this option can be used to define if the copy should be created with or without the Expression tag. Note that Selection and Normal tags, etc. are considered Expression tags if they contain Fields.

Clean Tracks

If this option is enabled, superfluous keyframes (i.e., consecutive keyframes with the same value) will be removed.

This option works in conjunction with all animations with the exception of object parameter animations (which cannot be evaluated by external applications anyway).

All Parameters

If this option is enabled, ALL of the options listed below it will be baked. Be careful when using this option because it can take a while to bake everything, depending on the object - and a lot of keys, including PLAs, which can take quite a while to process, may be generated.

Position/Scale/Rotation/PLA/Animated Parameter

Select which parameter(s) should be baked. Note that activating the PLA option can easily lead to very large file sizes. The Parameter option refers to all Attribute Manager parameters of the active element (except for those in the Coord. Tab).

Animated Parameter creates an animation keyframe for each intermediate frame for animated object parameters. No interpolation will take place between objects that lie farther apart.