RenderMap properties allow you to bake a variety of surface attributes into different image files. For example, you can bake complex blended texture, lighting, and bump-map information into a single surface color map, or create the kind of normal and tangent maps that are used to compute bump-mapping for games, all from the same RenderMap property.
This chapter covers:
• Applying a RenderMap property to an object and setting its parameters.
• Configuring and generating the various types of rendermap images.
• Rendermapping clusters to correctly create maps for objects with overlapping UV coordinates.
• Techniques for rendermapping multiple objects simultaneously.
• Rendermapping polygon objects using unique UVs projections.
• Using the Ultimapper tool to transfer maps from a high-resolution object or group to its low-resolution counterpart.
This chapter does not cover:
• RenderVertex, which is like RenderMap, but bakes surface attributes into Color at Vertices (CAV) properties. RenderVertex is discussed in RenderVertex.
SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.6.01