---
title: "Bake Material"
url: "https://help.maxon.net/c4d/en-us/Content/html/TBAKETEXTURE.html"
section_path: "Object Manager > Object Menu > Bake Material"
element_id: "TBAKETEXTURE"
command_id: "1011133"
description: "This page covers the Bake Texture tag in Cinema 4D. It renders illumination, shadows, ambient occlusion or complete materials of an object into bitmap …"
---

# Bake Material

> **Note:** **What is it about?**
>
> This page covers the **Bake Texture tag** in **Cinema 4D**. It renders illumination, shadows, ambient occlusion or complete materials of an object into bitmap files — useful for speeding up render times, exporting to game engines or freezing complex shading into portable textures.

> **Tip:** Tip:Note that this functionality does not work in conjunction with the Node Materials.

This function lets you render the following to one or more separate image files for selected objects (they must subsequently be applied manually):

- Channel shaders
- The previous 3D SLA shaders: Cheen, Danel, etc.
- Material
- Lighting
- Shadow
- Reflection
- GI
- Ambient Occlusion
- Normal maps
- Displacement maps
- UV maps

If you want to avoid having to subsequently assign the bitmap to a material, then an object, use the **Bake Object** function. This will, though, greatly limit the control you have opposed to using the manual method.

> **Tip:** Tip:Note that the Sculpting feature has its own [Bake](https://help.maxon.net/c4d/en-us/Content/html/49938.html.md) function in Cinema 4D, which is optimized for use with the Sculpting.

# Why bake materials?

Let's assume you want to render an animation, and a complex shader or area shadow has to be rendered for each image. You can, for example, save a lot of render time by baking the shader and projecting it onto the object as a normal image file.

You can even render lighting, bump, Ambient Occlusion, etc. onto the material, which lets you avoid having to light these objects, depending on your scene (in this case, add an **Luminance** material channel to your material).

The integrated optimized mapping makes sure the UV coordinates are placed in such a manner as to not overlap.

# How to Bake

Materials are now baked including all Material tags. Now you simply select the object itself, not the Material tag to be baked. If the object contains several materials, i.e., Material tags, they will be baked, taking hierarchy and alpha channels into consideration – exactly as the object would normally be rendered.

## Proceed as follows when you want to bake an object's material

1. Select the object in the **Object Manager**. The object must have a Material tag.
2. From the **Object Manager**, select **Objects / Bake Material**. The active object will be assigned a **Bake Material** tag.
3. Change the settings in the newly created tag, as needed.
4. Nothing will be baked until the **Bake** button in the **Options** tab is pressed. The render process will be shown in the preview window in the same tab.

The **Bake Material** tag will remain and be saved with the scene so you can keep a good overview of your previous work. An object can have numerous **Bake Material** tags!

In addition, several materials can be baked simultaneously – simply select the desired **Bake Material** tags and click on **Bake**.

> **Tip:** In rare cases, flawed material baking can result from inaccuracies in calculation. If this happens, white pixels can be seen, placed randomly on your image file.\
> Solution: Set the image file or shader's **Blur Offset** somewhat higher than 0%.

> **Tip:** Make sure the polygon Normals are oriented equally to the outside (i.e. on the side on which the material is projected) since only these **positive** polygon sides will be baked.

> **Tip:** One more tip:Make sure the object has a UVW tag. If it does not, one can be created using the [Create UVW tag](https://help.maxon.net/c4d/en-us/Content/html/5748.html.md) command.