3D Texturing Texture Baking & Rendering 2

Question 1

What is the primary purpose of a lightmap in real-time 3D rendering?

Accepted Answer

Pre-bake static lighting data into a texture for efficient real-time use

Answer

Lightmaps pre-compute static lighting including shadows and indirect bounces into textures, allowing real-time scenes to display complex lighting without expensive runtime calculations.

Question 2

What information does a thickness map store when baked from a mesh?

Accepted Answer

The distance from one surface of the mesh through to the opposite surface

Answer

A thickness map stores how thick the mesh is at each point by casting rays inward to the opposite surface, making it useful for subsurface scattering and translucency shaders.

Question 3

What is the primary use of a curvature map in a PBR texturing workflow?

Accepted Answer

Driving wear effects, edge highlights, and cavity darkening procedurally

Answer

Curvature maps highlight convex edges for wear or highlights and concave cavities for dirt or darkening, making them essential for procedural smart material masks.

Question 4

In Marmoset Toolbag's baking panel, what do the 'Max Frontal Distance' and 'Max Rear Distance' settings control?

Accepted Answer

How far projection rays extend forward and backward from the low-poly surface

Answer

These settings define the reach of baking rays in both directions from the low-poly cage, controlling how much of the high-poly mesh is sampled from each direction.

Question 5

Why is padding (also called dilation or bleed) added around UV islands in a baked texture?

Accepted Answer

To prevent visible seam artifacts at island edges during mip-mapping and filtering

Answer

Padding extends the baked color outward from UV island edges, preventing seams from appearing as the texture is filtered or sampled at lower mip levels.

3D Texturing Practice Test

3D Texturing Practice Test

3D Texturing Texture Baking & Rendering 2