Technical Workflow for AAA Game Characters - Vol 3 : Baking Mesh Maps
Now that we have our RETOPOLOGY (https://www.artstation.com/a/27669201) and UV MAPPING (https://www.artstation.com/a/28109314) completed for our Elf character, the next and FINAL stage for our Technical Workflow for AAA Game Characters is BAKING MESH MAPS!
The baking process is a vital stage for preparing your character for texturing and eventually the ultimate goal of getting them into the engine. These mesh maps include the most vital Normal, Ambient Occlusion, and Curvature maps. We'll also include Cavity, Position, Thickness, World Space Normal, among others.
For this part of the series, I'm venturing into both Substance Painter AND Marmoset Toolbag to explore with you how their baking processes work. I'll also go over my workflow and things I like to consider when setting things up and how I execute the bakes.
At the end, we'll have a complete set of baked mesh maps for our whole Elf character. This will get us prepared for a forthcoming texturing series (date TBD) where with these mesh maps as our foundation, we can create impressive final textures.
3 hrs of mostly real time non-edited videos with voiceover instruction (some moments are on fast speed just to make the bakes move along quicker for comfortable viewing)