<<<Half Baked

ok, I have seen others mention something about "Baking" textures, what does that mean? I thought I knew my stuff,just goes to show you can always learn something new. Would someone please explain the meaning of baked and how it's done

Baking is done automatically, though you can force a rebake by enabling the debug menus, and going to (I think) Client>Character>Rebake Textures.

I'd like to know what it is, too. My understanding of it (though I really have no idea whether it's right or not) is that avatars don't run around with multiple textures: in fact they run around with one texture, which is a 'baked' composite of the multiple clothing and skin textures they have.

Don't quote me on that, though. I might be totally wrong.

You are basically right, Catri except that there are three textures: head, upper body and lower body. But each section gets all skin, tattoo and clothes layers composited (baked) into one "layer" which is wrapped on the corresonding part of the avatar.

Another interpretation of "Baking" textures is when using an external program [i.e. not sl] to apply lighting/shading to textures/objects. With the object recreated in a 3d application and textured with various light sources set up (i.e. to simulate a lighting effect expected for that object in-world) the lighting/shadows are baked to the textures. These textures are then exported from the app and uploaded to SL where they can be applied to the object.

It might be worth pointing out that the use of a 3d app as detailed above isn't necessary, you can "bake" the lighting/shadows onto a texture manually in photoshop.

Nand's definition is the one most people are going to be using when they talk about baking textures. Most references to "baking" will mean the act of painting simulated light and shadow into your textures. As Nand mentioned, this can be done in a 3D modeling application like Maya or 3DS Max, or it can be done in a 2D paint program like Photoshop.

In the strictest sense though, the word "baking" can mean pretty much any process that brings together separate "ingredients" to finalize the look of a texture. The avatar outfitting that Sylvia and Catri mentioned is an example of this. When you put on an outfit, SL takes all the various textures that make up your shirt, pants, skin, underwear, etc., and composites them ("bakes" them) into a single set of jus three textures (head, upper body, and lower body). This single set is what gets displayed inworld. This process of combining multiple textures cuts down dramatically on the amount of active texture memory that each avatar uses on screen.

As Catri said, the avatar outfit bake happens automatically, but you can manually force a rebake should anything go wrong with the process.

The more common definition of baking, meaning lighting effects, is a very labor intensive process. You'll see that one of the biggest differences between work done by the best artists in SL and work done by everyone else is that the best artists are sensitive to how light would actually behave in any given scene, and they simulate that in their texturing. SL's actual lighting is extremely unrealistic, so good baked lighting is a must if you want your work to look real.