Executing a Redshift texture bake from Python

mplec1

Hi - I'm trying to execute a texture bake from an RS BakeSet from Python so we can run these on our render farm (e.g. non-UI session).

I found the functions c4d.utils.InitBakeTexture() and c4d.utils.BakeTexture() but I always get a black image. After a lot of googling I'm beginning to suspect these functions are using the old renderer and not Redshift but all the examples and documentation I can find about executing a Redshift render from Python are for a regular scene render, not a texture bake.
Can you point me to (or provide) an example of how to execute the bake of a RS BakeSet from Python?

ferdinand

Hello @mplec1,

Welcome to the Maxon developers forum and its community, it is great to have you with us!

Getting Started

Before creating your next postings, we would recommend making yourself accustomed with our forum and support procedures. You did not do anything wrong, we point all new users to these rules.

Forum Overview: Provides a broad overview of the fundamental structure and rules of this forum, such as the purpose of the different sub-forums or the fact that we will ban users who engage in hate speech or harassment.
Support Procedures: Provides a more in detail overview of how we provide technical support for APIs here. This topic will tell you how to ask good questions and limits of our technical support.
Forum Features: Provides an overview of the technical features of this forum, such as Markdown markup or file uploads.

It is strongly recommended to read the first two topics carefully, especially the section Support Procedures: How to Ask Questions.

About your First Question

The bake tag and by extension cinema::BakeTexture (and its Python equivalent c4d.utils.BakeTexture) unfortunately do not support Redshift, even for the older Xpresso based materials.

Redshift uses the tools found in Redshift/Tools/Texture Baking for baking. And while you can programmatically create a bake set and then programmatically click the 'Bake' button in it (which both would also work in a headless version of Cinema 4D, such as c4dpy), the following dialog which opens to set baking details and actually start the rendering is sealed, i.e., you cannot interact with it from the public API. And opening such dialog would also fail in a headless Cinema 4D instance.

So, I am afraid there is currently no solution for your problem. You can technically export the whole scene to a format such FBX or USD, and use the builtin baking output (which would also work in a headless environment, as long as you do NOT pass SAVEDOCUMENTFLAGS_DIALOGSALLOWED to the save/export operation). But the output of that automated baking is often of poor quality compared to manually baking object(s) via bake sets.

Cheers,
Ferdinand