bakeverting

Bakeverting is a term that emerged within digital art and 3D modeling communities, particularly associated with the Blender software. It refers to the process of baking a high-polygon or detailed mesh's surface information, such as normal maps, ambient occlusion, or color textures, onto a lower-polygon version of the same mesh. This technique is commonly used to optimize 3D models for real-time rendering engines, video games, or other applications where performance is a critical factor.

The core idea behind bakeverting is to simulate the visual complexity of a high-detail model on a simpler, more efficient one. For example, intricate carvings, sharp edges, or detailed surface textures on a high-poly model can be "baked" into a normal map, which is then applied to the low-poly model. This normal map essentially tells the rendering engine how light should interact with the low-poly surface to mimic the appearance of the original high-poly details.

The process typically involves creating two versions of a model: a high-polygon model with all the desired detail and a low-polygon model with a significantly reduced polygon count. Both models are then aligned in the same 3D space. Using specialized baking tools within 3D software, the detail from the high-poly model is projected onto the UV-unwrapped surface of the low-poly model, generating texture maps that capture this information. This allows for visually rich models to be used in performance-sensitive environments without the computational cost of rendering a highly complex mesh.