Tutorial Step-by-step

Flatiron Tutorial — Baking a High-Quality Scene to Real-Time Textures

This tutorial demonstrates how to convert a high-quality V-Ray rendered scene into an optimized real-time asset using Flatiron.

The goal is to bake all visual information—diffuse color, lighting, shadows, and global illumination—into a minimal set of textures.
In this example, we reduce a complex scene into only two textures, making it suitable for real-time rendering in engines or mobile applications while preserving the original visual quality.

Goal

Capture the final rendered look into textures
Reduce memory usage and complexity
Prepare the scene for real-time display (e.g. game engines, mobile apps)

Step 1 — Prepare the Scene

First, finalize your scene:

Apply all materials
Set up lighting (e.g. V-Ray)
Adjust composition and rendering settings

The scene should already look like a final render.

Example: A kitchen scene with dozens of objects, multiple materials, and high-quality V-Ray lighting.
This setup may use many textures and consume ~50 MB of memory.

Step 2 — Define Texture Groups

To optimize texture usage, divide the scene into logical groups.

In this example:

Walls + Floor → Selection Set: Walls
Furniture → Selection Set: Kitchen

This separation ensures:

Large surfaces (walls/floor) receive clean, high-resolution shading
Smaller objects (furniture) get their own optimized texture map

Step 3 — Create Selection Sets

Select all wall and floor objects → create selection set “Walls”
Select all remaining objects → create selection set “Kitchen”

Step 4 — Open Flatiron

Go to the Utility Tab in 3ds Max
Launch Flatiron

Step 5 — Configure Unwrapping

Since the scene consists of hard surface objects:

Set Unwrap Mode → Hard

Because the objects are already textured:

Source UV Channel → 1 (keep original UVs)
Target UV Channel → 2 (store baked UVs safely)

Additional settings:

Padding → 4
Texture Size → 2048 x 2048
Group Name → KitchenBake

The group name also defines the output texture file name.

Click Unwrap.

Flatiron will generate optimized UV layouts for each selection set.

Step 6 — Select Bake Input

Enable Selection Sets
Select both sets:
- Walls
- Kitchen
  Flatiron will:
unwrap each group separately
bake each into its own texture

Step 7 — Choose Bake Type

To capture the full rendered appearance, select the renderer-specific complete map:

V-Ray → VRayCompleteMap
This includes:
textures
lighting
shadows
global illumination

Step 8 — Assign Output

Set output to the Diffuse slot
Enable:
Make Self-Illuminated
→ prevents lighting from affecting the baked result in the viewport
Add Shell Material
→ keeps original materials while adding baked versions
Configure the Shell Material:
Viewport → Baked
Rendering → Original