Paul Ambrosiussen shows how to bake textures orders of magnitude faster using the Maps Baker in Houdini.

Houdini game tools are a set of free workflow tools and plugins that come out independently of the Houdini release cycle. Game tools are often handy things that will speed up development and game workflows. One such tool, the maps baker, can bake fast and high-quality maps much faster than the standard go-to solution in Houdini, the bake texture node.

SideFX Game Technical Artist, Paul Ambrosiussen offers some insights into the Maps Baker in a recent Houdini Users Group event. Paul shows how the maps baker replicates the functionality of the bake texture node, only using VEX code, all from inside COPs. Waiting for renders massively slows down iteration times, which is one of the primary reasons the tool exists: fast, high-quality map baking.