When to use texture baking?

[bm23]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I've gathered so far about texture baking is that an object and it's material is rendered with the desired settings, and the final result of the material is then converted into a map.

When do we do this? What if we make changes to the scene? I know it's supposed to help reduce render time but let's say, in a complex interior scene, you texture bake a sofa (i'm assuming that during this round of render, a lot of other objects are not rendered, if not, it'd defeat the purpose of texture baking). Since you have to hide other objects, doesn't it make the baked texture inaccurate since it doesn't take into account lighting effects due to other objects?

[Cad64]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I've gathered so far about texture baking is that an object and it's material is rendered with the desired settings, and the final result of the material is then converted into a map.

 

That is correct, but bear in mind, when you texture bake you are baking in the lighting and shadow information too. So if you change the lighting of your scene from say a daytime scene to a nighttime scene, or you change the position of the sun or the lights in a room, your baked texture may not work so well because of the lighting and shadows that are included in the texture.

 

Texture baking, from what I know of it, is primarily done for objects that will be used in animation or games. If you're just doing still renders, there really is no need to bake your textures, unless you really want to.

[spittle]

Like CAD64 said it makes sense for animations or when you want to navigate your textured model in real time within a game engine or Autodesk design review. It can render around 8-10 times faster. So it's worthwhile if each frame of an animation is taking forever to render.