Hi folks!
When I’am trying to bake a normal using bevel node the area of UVs in image shows as blank (gray). Is that a bug or my fault?
You’re trying to bake a tangent space map without multiRes and without Selected to Active. Unless you know something I don’t, all you’re ever going to get is a flat blue image even if you have actual geometry bevels. Tangent space baking typically requires ray-tracing from one object to another.
As a test, try baking to Object Space instead, this only requires the model being baked to.
You can also use ray-traced baking to create Object Space maps but it’s not a requirement.
You also have to set the Image Node to “Non-Color” data for normal maps. This has to do with gamma correction being applied to image maps; and since normal maps become part of the lighting math, they must be in a linear color format, this is also usually going to be true for most gray-scale mask types(non-color) but don’t assume it’s always true, always double and triple check when you’re learning something new(AO bakes for Mix nodes should stay “Color” even though this is a data operation and not a color one).
Also, never use .jpg for normal maps. .jpg is what’s known as a lossy format, it compresses images by stripping out data and once that happens it’s lost forever. png, tga, tiff should all be safe, they are all lossless formats. The algorithms they use for compression can always be 100% reversed. I always use png.
Interesting, apparently you do know something I know. I edited my earlier answer btw. You should read it. There’s a mistake in what you did that will haunt you.
I was originally going to say not to use 2.8 because it’s completely broken all over. I didn’t want to be rude.
There’s indeed a bug in 2.8 texture baking here, our automated tests are failing in a similar way since recently. It will be fixed.
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This is totally off-topic but since you’re here and Brecht has already answered the question:
@DotBow, A million thank you’s upon you.
I can’t believe how well this works, If it wasn’t for you I would never have even tried baking the bevel node directly to a Tangent space normal map without ray-tracing and that method is soooo messy, tedious, and error prone due to geometry mis-alignment issues between the high and low res meshes as model complexity increases.
This mesh is so messy I should not even be able to bake a normal map on it. Certainly not one that can be used on shiny surfaces. This took something like 3-5 minutes, normally I’d bake the normal map in Object Space-> switch to Blender Render->remove all the modifiers->add a Triangulate Modifier->Setup a material that uses the baked Object Space map->Create a new image texture->then bake to Tangent Space. That takes at least 15 minutes + another 5 for every mistake that has to be corrected.
If the Bevel node was able to handle profiles so it could do sharp/angular bevels and not just curved edges it would literally be the best tool for game-developers ever made. (Wink-wink B-Man). It’s obviously still most of the way there as it is now.
Thanx for answer! Since blender 2.8 is enough stable and usable, baking is the last piece of my workflow not working. Great work!
@MarcClintDion you are welcome 
Thanks for help by the way!
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