Guide to project texture with the Render to texture panel.

Now this panel is one of the more settings heavy panels in Max. The Render to texture feature we are going to look at now is the projection and bake feature. We are going to project topology from a highres model to the UV’s of a flat plane and generate a normalmap and lightmap based on those UV’s.

Prepare the mesh you want to project well in the scene.

• Give all shapes and models proper names! The projection mesh should be named “MyName”_Lowres or something like that.
• Make a square background plane marking the texture area.
• Copy it and move it up (this will be the projection plane to bake from).
• Go into Object Proberties and de-select cast shadows (Right click menu).
• Add UVW modifier.
• Place the ornament geometry on the plane and arrange it where you want it to be placed on the texture.
• Make slots on the texture so you are able to add more stuff to it later.

Add a skylight to the scene and check the make shadows flag on.

Now go to the Rendering menu and select Render to Texture.

• Select a destination path.
• Select the projection plane we created before. It’s name appears in the panel under Name when selected.
• Click “Pick” and add the highres models we just created in the menu named Add Targets.
• Click options. Switch off the Use Cage flag.
• Switch off Sub-object Levels.
• Switch On Use existing channel (your UVW’s)
• Under Output click Add and add a normalsmap and a Lightmap for output.
• Choose size.
• Click Render