What is baking?

You may have heard the term ‘baking’ before. Perhaps while working with 3D or compositing. Or perhaps this is your first time hearing it. In this article we will explore the term and look at how it relates to Toon Boom Harmony.

About baking

The term ‘bake’ in animation and visual FX means to commit a dynamic filter, texture etc. to an object or layer. In other words, it takes something that is continuously calculating data and flattens it into a simplified, static format (like images or keyframes), and can also be applied to another element. Basically, it is like taking many elements of different types and merging them into or onto a single element.

The process of baking will always permanently change the object that is being baked onto. The filter or transformation that is being baked can either be removed or remain intact based on the feature and software you are using.

Advantages of baking:

• Improves and optimizes performance.
• Reduces render times.
• Can be easier for working with third party software as it converts software-specific features to more universal image or object formats.

Disadvantages of baking:

• Some forms of baking are destructive and you cannot go back to editing the elements separately unless you undo your actions.

What can be baked in Harmony?

Baking can be used in the following places in Harmony. 

Deformers

In Harmony, you can bake a layer’s deformer transformation onto the layer itself. In this case, the animation on the deformer will remain intact, but the layer it’s attached to will have added drawings in the shape of the deformer transformations.

Where to use it?

Only use this if you want to convert your deformation movement into a paperless format, or want to commit the transformation into a form where you can edit the artwork using the drawing tools.

For more information, see How do I bake a deformer?

Static Transformation node

The Static Transformation node is often used in rigging to store a position in a static format that when reset will not revert back to 0,0, but rather to the position it holds. This node cannot be animated on, but rather requires that a position from a hierarchy peg above it is baked into the Static Transformation node. 

Where to use it?

This node is very useful when cloning rig parts that you don’t want to reset back to the position of the original part.

For more information, see Static Transformation Node.

Using Bake groups for gaming assets

If you are using Harmony’s rigging tools to rig assets for export to Unity, there are a few restrictions when it comes to using the rigging features. To bypass some of these restrictions, parts of the rig can be grouped and set up for baking during export. This can be done for certain unsupported deformers and effect nodes.

For more information, see Using Bake_Groups and How do I export animations to Unity that contain non-compatible deformers or effects?

Where to use it?

Use bake groups when you want to apply a deformer or effect node that is not supported by Unity to a gaming rig.

External Rendering toolbar

The External Rendering toolbar provides options that allow your 3D and Harmony scenes to interact. Two of these options involve baking:

• Bake Nodes: This allows you to render out a 3D sequence through Maya or Blender and save it as a sequence of EXR files. By doing this, Harmony will be able to load the rendered images without relaunching the 3D software or re-rendering. 
• Bake to External Project: This allows you to create a new project file in the external 3D software containing all the animation and transformations on the 3D model from Harmony. These changes will be made in the new file, preserving your original 3D project file. This allows the 3D project file to be updated, shared and rendered externally.

Where to use it?

Use it when you want to bake 3D information into your Harmony scene, or bake it into an external 3D project file.

For more information, see External Rendering Toolbar.

Particles

There are two bake-related nodes that can be used in a particle system:

• Particle-Baker: This node combines all particle nodes and applies values for simulation settings like position, angle, number, etc. to everything as one. For more information, see Baker.
• Baker Composite: Simply used to composite more than one Particle-Baker together. For more information, see Baker Composite.

Where to use it?

Use it in a particle system when you want to apply overall settings to multiple particle nodes.