---
title: "Texture Baking"
canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/DOCSGUIDE/113290513/Texture%20Baking"
format: markdown
---
<span style="color: #000000">Rendering to texture, or "texture baking,” creates texture maps based on an object's appearance in the rendered scene, including any lighting variations over the object such as highlights and shadows. The idea is that these variations in lighting are “baked” into the texture and become part of the texture's coloration. Then all light sources are removed from the scene, and the baked texture is reapplied to the same object as part of a self-illuminated material. The result is an object that still appears to be lit by scene lighting, without the overhead of calculating the effects of light sources on objects in the scene.</span>

<span style="color: #000000">The advantage of using baked textures is that real-time display is much faster, since the effects of light sources don't have to be calculated. Such textures are ideal for displaying the textured object rapidly on Direct3D devices such as graphics display cards or game engines. The fact that there's no actual lighting in the scene can sometimes become obvious when the camera or objects move and the lighting displayed on the texture doesn't respond as expected, but during fast game play this distraction is minimal and well worth the time savings gained by using baked textures.</span>

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