Bake Object

Bake Object is the one-click version of the Bake Material tag (maybe 2 or 3 clicks are really required … ). This is how it works:

Select one or more objects to bake (all Child objects in a hierarchy will be baked as well).
Select Bake Object … from the Objects menu and make the appropriate settings in the window that opens.
Click on Bake. A single(!) texture (that will be placed into the Luminance channel of a newly created material) will be calculated and assigned for each selected object. All material channels of the original material will be included in rendering.

The baked object will not be contained in any light's Include or Exclude list since the newly created object is not automatically added to these lists.

With reference to GI, light that falls on the reverse side of polygons will be ignored by the Baker!

Tip for baking GI:When rendering GI numerous automated processes are implemented that optimize the Sample Count and Record Density values. Unfortunately these do not work in conjunction with the Bake functionality and are therefore (internally) reduced in quality, sometimes drastically. Setting these values manually (however longer render times can result, as with normal GI rendering) can help remedy this for:

Set Samples to Custom Sample Count and use a Sample Count of around 400.

Settings

Most of the following settings (and many more) can also be found in the Bake Texture … tag, where all settings are described to the utmost detail.

This is why the Bake Object … functions will only be described briefly here.

Ambient Occlusion

Color channels and Ambient Occlusion will be baked to two separate textures. The Ambient Occlusion texture will then be loaded to the Diffusion channel.

Normal

Bakes the Normal texture, which will subsequently be loaded into the Normal material channel.

Illumination

If this option is active, the effects of various material channels (not including Reflectance, Transparency, Fog or Glow), including lighting and cast shadows will be baked. Hence, the most important material channels that constitute the surface of the object will be added to the texture. This functionality corresponds to the Bake Texture … Tag's Surface Color.

If the option is not active, only the color channel will be baked.

The baked material will be loaded into the Luminance material channel.

Single Texture

When active, this option will bake a single texture for numerous simultaneously selected objects. Of course the UV coordinates will be arranged in such a manner that a separate area for each object will be assigned to the texture.

Deactivate this option if you want to bake a separate texture for each object.

Keep UVs

Enable this option if you have already set your UVs the way you want them (no UV polygons overlap). The UV mesh will then remain unchanged. When active, this option unwraps the UV mesh as described here.

Replace Objects

Enable this option if no new textures should be created during baking. The generated textures will be applied to the baked objects.

Supersampling

Supersampling sets the anti-aliasing during baking of the object's texture (the anti-aliasing settings in the Render Settings … have no influence when baking textures).

Pixel Border

Bakes a pixel border that extends beyond the UV polygons.

Width / Height

Defines the width and height of the texture(s) to be baked.

Format / Options

Select your bitmap's file format here. If the format you select offers additional save options, the Options … button will be made active.

Color Depth

Select from 8-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit per channel.

Not all file formats support all color depths!

Color Profile

With this setting you can define which color profile should be embedded in the image/texture. In versions prior to R12, Cinema 4D automatically saved using the sRGB color profile. This can now be set to any color profile desired. However, you should only make changes to this setting if absolutely necessary.

Note that many programs cannot read color profiles (for example, Windows 7 can only partially read color profiles).

When using Linear Workflow in conjunction with Multi-Passes we recommend that you render with at least 16-bit color depth. If this is not possible, disable the Linear Workflow option to restore the normal Cinema 4D R12 properties (reason: Multi-Passes are saved with a linear profile.

More information regarding color management can be found here.

Generally speaking, the default sRGB profile will be the correct profile.

Clicking the button at the right will make the following menu items available for selection:

Color Management Disabled

No color profile will be embedded (will be read in accordance with the Project Settings or bitmap shader settings when the file is opened).

Load/Save

Here you can load a color profile or save an existing one. These files have the extension *.icc. If an image is loaded here, its color profile will be assumed.

Load From Monitor

You can use monitor(hardware) profiles. However, this is not recommended since your monitor’s color profile will almost never match that of another monitor.

sRGB

Saves the image with sRGB color profile.

Linear

Saves the image in a linear color profile.

Path Name

Sets an absolute path to which the baked textures will be saved as a new material.

Make sure Cinema 4D can later locate these files.