Bake3d � the basics of baking the lights into textures
The baking of lights into textures is being used in games industry mostly, but it�s more and more used among other users too. It�s a good way of putting the lights and shadows into a game or a scene. In the following tutorial I�ll show you how to bake the light into textures with the Bake3d plugin which is part of the Vray renderer.
So, enough talking and let�s start. First I�ll show you the basic features of Bake3d.

	I made a small scene as you can see on picture c1 where I�ll show you automatic mapping feature of Bake3d. It�s not the best method though. I collapsed the objects into one piece and deleted the bottom faces so it doesn�t take more place in Unwrap than neccessary.
	Next I applied a checker map on the object so we can see the details and if the mapping is correct.
	Now we can go to Bake3d. Go to Utilities and click More. Choose Bake3d from the list.
	You can see the Bake3d rollout which I divided into two pictures (a and b). First the A part. There is Map Channel in the UV Generator rollout. It�s set to 1 by default and we can leave it as it is. Click the Generate tex coords button and the object will get mapped. You can see relatively good mapping but it�s not optimal. There are some errors and the mapping isn�t regular so I advise using UVW Unwrap and UVW Map to tweak the mapping. Now continue to the B part. There�s another map channel and Map type in the Lightmap baking rollout. Complete material will bake the light and the checker map but we�ll use Diffuse lighting only which will bake the light only. Map resolution sets the size of the texture. The bigger the better but it also takes longer time to render. In Output file you can set the path for the result. If you check the Auto-apply material then the resulting map will be automatically applied to the object. The other buttons are meant for assigning or removing rendered textures to and from the objects.
	Now let�s try how it works. Open the Render dialog by pressing the F10 key and choose Vray as your renderer (Bake3d won�t work without it). Set the parameters as seen on the picture. Also add a light to your scene. I used an omni with settings shown on the picture.
	Go to Bake3d again and set the parameters in the Lightmap baking rollout as you see on the picture. Then click the Render Lightmaps button to bake the lighting into the texture.
	The result should be similar to this depending on the placement of your light. You can see the lightmap on the picture too. .