Hi,
I know it sounds weird! but is there any possibility to export unreal baked level to other 3d programs? I’m not trying anything, but just thinking of the possibility to use UE as a baking platform (my brain having crazy thoughts) too if possible…
It would be very time consuming to do it, technically you can get geometry and textures out, but for instance with lightmaps it uses texture atlases which combine multiple lightmaps into one. Internally it keeps track of what part of the atlas a lightmap goes to, but there’s no way to export that information out so you’d have to figure out what goes to what on your own.
If you’re looking into an easy baking solution for 3ds Max, you can use a tool like Flatiron which automates the process using the tools in 3ds Max.
Thanks… But you should really look into making unreal engine a lighting baking and rendering platform too if possible!! This piece of jewel outshines those time consuming realistic renderers !!!
Using Mental Ray or Vray in 3ds Max is going to give you better results, it’ll be slower but you would avoid some of the issues of UE4 like how it processes each object individually.
I’m also not sure Epic would like UE4 to be used in that way.
3D Studio Max - I can’t see any reason to use UE4 as a baking engine as 3D Studio also can do this through Radiosity, Render to texture (which I use often for AO baking or static light baking) or even VRay’s Photon Cache (if I remember right). Im sure even Mental Ray has got that option somewhere. And still you’d get much better result with baked lighting in 3D Studio then UE4. Still, UE4 is much muuuch better for real time visualisations.