Blender bug: "No images found to bake to"?

Please forgive if this has been asked and answered elsewhere, but I did some searching and couldn't find that on the forums.

I've been learning Blender and am very happy with the flexibility it gives me to sculpt shapes very intuitively, and it's taken on a big role in my content creation, alongside Sculptpaint, which I really love for more symmetrical shapes. My question arises from a very annoying bug that Blender has.... occasionally I'll be going along, sculpting happily, when a stray key stroke accidentally does *something* and my baked sculpt map is suddenly gone. And I can't get it back!

I usually work in the common way; having a split window with the 3d representation of the object on the left, and the sculpt UV map on the right. I try to save a UV sculpt map every few minutes, keeping a running record of my progress on any given sculpt map. But this bug is really annoying... what is happening when suddenly my sculpt map vanishes? This is really really a bad thing... because once it's gone, it's GONE. There's nothing I can do to bring it back, I just keep getting the "No Images Found to Bake To" error message when I try to rebake. Yes, I have my saved TGA maps... but I'm effectively done working on that particular project. Since I can't get a sculpt map back in the active .blend file, it's just garbage to me at that point. Why is this program built in such a way?

What's especially bad, is that if I accidentally lose my UV map in the active .blend project, it doesn't matter if I've saved the project as a .blend file already, and just quit the program the second the UV map disappears. Somehow, the disappearing UV map goes back in time and affects my *already saved* blend file, such that I can't use it anymore; I can't get a baked UV map from it, ever again. Ever. No matter what I do. I have to start over from scratch.

Please, I'm sure I'm just really stupid and there is something really basic that I'm not doing. If someone knows how to fix this, could you please explain in detail, so even someone as helpless as me can do it? Lol. Thanks so much.... any help in this would be most appreciated!

Oh, and yes I've looked on the Blender forums... they've not been very helpful on this. I'm sorry, I don't know where else to ask... I know this is an SL forum and not a Blender forum, but I'm out of options at this point.

Cheers,

- Syn

It helps if you give us info on the verion you are using... we'll assume you are on 2.45.

In 3D window with UV Face Select mode there is a reset command (U -> RESET or buttons FACE -> UnwrapUVs -> Reset). That usually recovers things for me.

If prior work is affected, I would suspect file name problems. Put your work somewhere other than Blender's default location.

Blender can be a pain and is not forgiving. The newer versions do have Ctrl-Z undo.

Good luck.

I wish I could give you satisfaction. Sadly I encounter this same problem constantly. Sometimes the uvmap could be resurected via appending a material from a known good .blend file. Other times(lately) no joy. Like you, I have no idea what i've done to remove the map nor what blender means by the messege "no image to bake to" not what to do about it. Anyone?

When i encounter the message "no image to bake too" i usually go to the UV-editor, create a new image (with 64*64 width/height). then baking works for me again.

In blender 2.45 i also have to move my main window to "UV face select" mode.
in blender 2.46 (together with domino's scripts) sometimes i need to go to Object mode, before baking works as before.

I am not sure, if this also helps in your situation, but maybe it is worth a try ?

it is like gaia says:
blender can only bake an image on an existing one. so go into the uv editor and create a new image in the size you like.

In 2.46 Blender displays the image associated with the UV faces in the UV image editor. The latest sculptie scripts don't bake to this image, but to the one listed in the properties (pacman icon) under LL_SCULPT_IMAGE. So in edit mode, the baking is done but the auto display of last baked image won't work. That's why switching to object mode before baking works as expected. If you bake in edit mode, then switch to object mode, you can still select the sculptie map in the image editor combo box.

The scripts also create a new image if the one named in LL_SCULPT_IMAGE doesn't exist, so you should never see the "no image to bake too" error on the latest scripts.

I've tried this many times, and allways with no joy. New image or selecting an other image in the UV image editor, neither has any affect on the error.

With multires meshes, you need to assign the image on level 1. The image on level 1 is automatically assigned to the higher levels for baking. If you set the image on a higher level, then it gets set to level 1's "missing image" and would give this error.

But it also sounds like you are on older versions of the scripts that still relied on the UV map having an assigned image. 0.16 is the latest render_sculptie script. It was released on 7th of May and shouldn't ever show this error when baking the sculptie maps.

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I had this happen repeatedly recently while using Blender on an airplane. I do not blame the airplane. I blame the beverage cart in first class. Once I had landed and tidied my person, everything worked fine. Go figure.

nope, neither multi rez , nor the scripts. The has occured peroidly since almost day one of doing sculpties(when they were still only on betagrid). I would get seriously into the internals of blender if you could recommend a book or reference manual. Not just for sculpties either. I've been using Blender avidly for about three years. I've built my RL house and made some movies(nothing special). But I have had a hard time finding out how to get down and dirty with blender and python(I am a fairly competant programmer).

I just use the api docs and learn the bits I need as I go along. I don't know of any books on it.

http://www.blender.org/documentation/246PythonDoc/

If you have a saved blend that shows the image problem I can investigate that.

wow, give me a few minuites i'll drag one up and get a dl anle link to it for you.
At one point i thought i't might have been related to the settings i had for saving files (I know to save all before i quit) but i can't seem to relocate what that was or where.
dl link in a few minutes...

http://filer.case.edu/sxg7/public/battest1.blend

http://filer.case.edu/sxg7/public/battest1.blend

I've tested the bat and I don't get any errors about "No Image". It did do the bake just by opening the file and doing Render - Bake Second Life Sculpties. There was something odd with the UV Image Editor though, I couldn't get it to display the selected image. I closed it ( by joining back to main view) then split and added it back and everything worked as expected.

Checked a little further. I noticed you have a material setup for baking sculpties. This isn't as accurate as using my scripts and it does depend on having an assigned image. I'd do the material differently. Uncheck "Texface" check "Shadeless" and set the base color to black.

The .tga file you have assigned to the UVs doesn't exist and that causes the "No Image" when you try to bake. Selecting the "Untitled" image or creating a new image lets the bake work as expected.

You don't need to do any material or image setup with my scripts, it does it all for you.

Thanks Domino, With the join and resplit, at least i can get your bakes to show so i can save them. I tried the {Uncheck "Texface" check "Shadeless" and set the base color to black} I didn't notice any difference in effect or output, (Was that more to enhance the output of your script, than for getting the old bake method to work?). I'd tried making a new image etc. but unlike you I've never been able to 'select' them. Even the saved output of your script. The various untitled uvmaps and the original uvmap (and now even the save uvmap from you script) do show when i ding the arrow beside the IM:name , but no clicking on them (or inputing the name by hand result in switching to that image.
It is curious that the image was not saved with the .blend. Right? I still think there's something awry with the "what gets save in a .blend" settings somewhere. I was sure I'd ticked for everything to be saved... hmm, ah, (>edit methods>material linked to object) sould this be linked to obdata instead? Also in Duplicate with object, I've selected everything but IPO (which is completly unrelated to unmaps and baking, rght?)

It's for the old bake method, the material isn't needed for my scripts, this leaves the material free to do the texturing The difference is with Texface enabled the sculptie gets corrupt if you bake multiple times in a session. The new bake is added on top of the first one. Shadeless stops lights from having any effect and the base black is so the sculpties don't end up too white with shadeless enabled.

Nodes are an easier way to do a material based baker, but my scripts allow for the edges better than a material based baker. With a plane and a material bake the last row and column will be half sized. With the scripts, you get the full plane as modelled. The only sculptie type that works as well with a material bake as with the scripts is a torus. All the others will have these half sized faces on the top pole or an edge or two.



Images aren't saved with the blend unless they are packed into it. Any images you don't explicitly save from the uv image editor or pack into the blend will be lost on a reopen. None of the settings you mention are related to saving. Material is linked to obdata by default, I've never found a need to change it.

Thank you again Domino. As the script method is infallifble I'll just use that.
I'd noticed that 'lightening' thing happening every so often. It's good to know why it was happening now. /me crawls back into the blender for deep meditation and groking...