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I baked a procedural texture and now it renders very dark. For the node setup I simply plugged in an image texture node with a diffuse shader (with roughness set to 0) into the material output. No lighting was changed, the mesh was smart UV unwrapped and the image was baked to a transparent background. Is there a common reason for this?

Here is a screenshot (.blend is way too large to upload unfortunately). The highlighted part is usually rendered much brighter with more visible detail.

enter image description here

This is what it renders like without the bake and here are the bake settings:

enter image description here

Thanks

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  • $\begingroup$ Would you mind uploading a screen shot? If you can upload the .blend file, it will be even more helpful. $\endgroup$
    – Allosteric
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 1:19
  • $\begingroup$ How is the render result like before baking. And, would you mind showing us the baking settings? $\endgroup$
    – Allosteric
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 3:27
  • $\begingroup$ I noticed that in the outliner, one of your objects is turned off for rendering.(the dim camera icon) I am not quite sure whether this is relevant in this specitic case, but having it on and having it off raises different results even for baking. $\endgroup$
    – Allosteric
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 5:01
  • $\begingroup$ That's the cube that is parented to R2D2 to help him along the path. But I know what you mean...in this case no lighting was changed though. All variables are the same between the rendered version with bake and without bake. $\endgroup$
    – lakerice
    Commented Dec 22, 2017 at 13:07
  • $\begingroup$ Maybe, you should simplify the problem by omitting objects. make a duplicate of your .blend and remove objects (and modifiers) or replacing it with primitives to reach the most simple file which still has the problem. If you still cannot find the problem there, I recommend you upload that simplified file. $\endgroup$
    – Allosteric
    Commented Dec 23, 2017 at 0:36

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You have two points to refine. 1. Use the emission shader. 2. add transparent input.

1. Use the Emission Shader

I should have noticed this earlier but when you bake with combine, the shader to use is usually an emission shader.

2. Add transparent input

As far as I know, combine baking does not support transparent shader. Your node system requires the transparent nodes that you already use.

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  • $\begingroup$ Oh I see...didn't realize baking didn't support the transparent shader. That's really good to know. So in terms of baking with combine, you are saying you must use emission? $\endgroup$
    – lakerice
    Commented Jan 2, 2018 at 15:20
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    $\begingroup$ As far as I know, the diffuse shader is the main cause of darkening. However, I'm not quite sure whether the emission shader is the best answer since you need to controll the strength. $\endgroup$
    – Allosteric
    Commented Jan 3, 2018 at 22:57
  • $\begingroup$ Right makes sense. $\endgroup$
    – lakerice
    Commented Jan 5, 2018 at 14:53

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