The 'Vertex Illumination Baking' function provides a means for users to bake or burn-in the illumination colors of the scene directly to the vertices of the geometry as a Vertex Color Map. The results of the baking is a Vertex Color Map named illumination that will be immediately available in the Lists viewport. To produce a result, users only need to run the command, located in the menu bar under the "Vertex Map > Vertex Illumination Baking".
 RayGL in-viewport render preview |
 Resulting baked Vertex Color Map |
To view any Vertex Color Map, users need to set the viewport display option to 'Vertex Map' and then choose the named map from the 'Lists' viewport. To generate multiple maps, it is necessary for users to rename any previously generated map(s) before executing the command again, as subsequent baked maps will overwrite previous value to existing maps named 'illumination'.
For best results, users need to keep in mind that the illumination colors are baked in to the individual vertices themselves, so geometry needs to be present for effect to work properly. To easily visualize the Illumination baking, users can enable the viewport RayGL rendering option, providing an in-viewport reference of the results. When the command is invoked, modo samples the color at each vertex point in 3D space, including cast shadows and the effects of global illumination, and applies the color at that particular point to the vertex. With appropriately modeled geometry, this can produce strikingly realistic results, that take virtually zero time to render. Many real-time gaming engines then utilize these maps to simulate lighting in an environment without the additional overhead of actually calculating the lighting per frame. Depending on the particular lighting need, and the desired effect, users may also wish to apply 'Vertex Smoothing' to the Vertex Illumination result providing a softer, less chunky result.
TIP: Game engines likely display vertex color maps differently than modo does. It is therefore recommended users test geometry in their target application to ensure the expected results.
