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I am using some fairly irregular shapes, and most of the tutorials I have found have been about baking cubes or rectangular prisms, and I can't get that to work with my shapes, or have been about Blender Render. The objects that I wish to bake are pictured below.

enter image description here

It is supposed to be a building, and there are two rectangular prisms joined to make it. The prisms have been aligned face to face and edge to edge so I know there is no gap or anything between them. The same goes for the door and door frame. The top of the larger of the rectangular prisms has a knife project on it so I can easily remove a section of it and add things on the inside of the building. There is nothing inside it yet as I want to bake it first.

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps, and if there is any information you might need that I have not supplied please tell me.

UPDATE: I tried the solution offered by @pycoder and I got an error saying that there is no active image found in one of my materials. Is this something that is required for baking?

John B
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  • see this other answer for more info and examples: http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/13508/how-do-i-bake-a-texture-using-cycles-bake – m.ardito Dec 05 '16 at 14:37
  • also if your room is completely closed, add a new lamp inside like point or area, with enough power to illuminate your "room"... – m.ardito Dec 05 '16 at 14:44

1 Answers1

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Nothing really changes from a rectangular baking tutorial to anything else except for the UV mapping. Try using "Smart UV Project" to unwrap a complex object quickly, then go through the baking steps.

  1. Add the image texture that you want to bake to in all of your materials (on the object that you are baking).
  2. Setup the bake settings (depending on what you want to bake), then hit the bake button.
  3. Save the baked image.
JakeD
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  • Okay so I just tried that, and I got a much better unwrap than before (actually its perfect now). However I got an error saying there is no active image found in one of the materials. Is there a way to bake without needing an image reference? Or is there a way to use an image without distorting the material? Is this something I should create a new question for? – John B Dec 05 '16 at 03:31
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    Every material needs an image in it, but it shouldn't "distort" your material. It just needs to be sitting as the active node somewhere, not connected to anything else or contributing to the material in any other way. The "baker" will find the active texture and know where to bake to. – JakeD Dec 05 '16 at 12:32