Generic Bake Texture Node
One thing I've noticed about baking is that a large portion of the bake-able texture types are really just writing to a texture by sampling from the node graph.
In situations like this, is there really a difference between writing roughness, metallic, color or any other potential color input into a shader node? Why can't we just have a Generic Bake that you can slot into your node trees? (concept image may be missing some features and has inaccuracies)
The node doesn't need to be overly complicated, as the standard baking workflow still exists.
I assume most of the code for texture baking is already built in a way that allows this node to operate mostly on recycling/referencing the existing system.
3 Comments
I love this Idea but I will expand it.
Oposing of what you say, I think a "bake texture node" needs something extra than simplified image texture.
I will suggest adding all the options from the bake panel. Then you can have multiple bakings preset and just press bake on the node to bake that specific texture. Currently you have to change all the settings per bake and if you need to redo it can be a tedious task. Also just be affected of the input to that node. Currently you have to output whatever you want to bake.
This would make a lot of more sense indeed. Baking textures in blender is not intuitive. This way will be more easier to do and to remember how to do!!!
This brings back the original problem when the material has more than one shader node and mix nodes after that - where do I put the node when I want this material, for example, baked metallic