What you'll learn

Video games are highly reliant on special maps like normal maps, ID masks, and ambient occlusion maps. So, in this series of 3ds Max tutorials, we'll discuss map baking techniques for games in 3ds Max. We'll first cover the basic workflow for baking maps in 3ds Max. We'll talk about why we need to explode our meshes and how to begin setting up materials for our ID mask. Then we'll learn how to properly set up a projection that will gather our high-poly detail and bake it into our maps. After that, we'll learn how to set up a scene for baking an ambient occlusion map. Finally, we'll end this 3ds Max training on how to overcome common errors in our bakes, like waviness and normal map gaps. Software required: 3ds Max 2015.