Baking

Bake texture maps directly from SDF data using orthographic ray-marching projection. No mesh conversion required.

Bake Panel

Bake Output

Basic Usage

  1. Select the Chisel render engine
  2. Open Render Properties > Bake panel
  3. Enable the maps you want to bake (Normal, Mask, Height)
  4. Set the bake direction and resolution
  5. Choose an output directory
  6. Click Bake Maps

Parameters

Resolution

  • Range: 128 to 4096
  • Default: 1024
  • Effect: Pixel count along the longer axis

Padding

  • Range: 0.0 to 0.5
  • Default: 0.0
  • Effect: Edge crop fraction to remove black border artifacts

Max Steps

  • Range: 64 to 4096
  • Default: 1024
  • Effect: Ray-marching iterations for baking precision

Direction

Choose the orthographic projection direction:

Direction View
Top +Z looking down
Bottom -Z looking up
Front -Y looking forward
Back +Y looking backward
Left -X looking right
Right +X looking left

Flip

  • Swap width/height (use Y for the longer dimension)

Output Directory

  • Folder path for saved map files

Map Types

Normal Map

  • Output: RGB world-space normals (R=X, G=Y, B=Z)
  • Use case: Apply to low-poly mesh for high-detail shading
  • Normals are computed analytically from the SDF gradient, capturing all rounding, blending, and boolean detail

Height Map

  • Output: Grayscale linear depth (white = closest, black = farthest)
  • Use case: Displacement maps, parallax mapping, terrain data
  • Height Range: Distance range mapped to the grayscale output (default 1.0 Blender unit)

Mask Map

  • Output: Black and white silhouette (white = surface, black = empty)
  • Use case: Alpha masks, compositing, trim sheet boundaries

Per-Object Overrides

Each Chisel object can override the global direction and flip settings in its Object Properties panel.

See Also