I just heard about Zen BBQ through my notifications, and I have a (few) questions (I posted on the video, but I'll ask here as well): 1. Can this addon, for lack of a better term, eliminate the need to bake a normal/AO/curvature map in substance painter? I have an AMD GPU (RX 7800 XT), and being able to bake substance painter quality normal/AO maps in blender, then import those to substance painter itself would be a huge time-saver for me as substance does not support AMD GPUs. My projects usually take about an hour or more to bake every texture map on my models in substance painter, if there's a way to cut that time in half or less using your addon, that would be great. 2. I was watching your old video tutorial explaining Zen BBQ and in that video, you did a high-to-low poly bake, but I didn't see a high poly model this time, just a single, standard model, which is exactly how I bake in substance painter. Does Zen BBQ now only use one model?

@DIESELADDICT66 ,Hey! 1. Zen BBQ uses a single model to bake all the maps you mentioned. This allows you to use these maps in any program that supports them, including Substance Painter. However, I need to warn you right away that baking in Blender using an AMD GPU causes artifacts. This happens on NVIDIA GPUs as well, though they are less noticeable there. This occurs because GPUs prioritize speed and may simplify certain calculations. If you encounter artifacts, you'll need to switch to CPU rendering. I believe this might be the reason why Substance Painter doesn't support AMD GPUs. So, while you can replace SP's baking with our addon, you might have to switch to CPU to avoid artifacts. Because of this, you might not get the time savings you're hoping for. This is just a theory, though—we haven't tested it in practice. 2. Zen BBQ got its baking feature starting with version 2.0. Before that, you could only generate bevels and had to bake them manually using Blender's native tools. However, both in the current version and previous ones, it has always been based on a single model. I don't recall any video where we showed high-to-low poly baking—it might have been a tutorial from someone else. To answer your question simply: yes, we use only a single model to bake all maps. A high-poly model is not needed.

Thank you! I was unaware of AMD GPUs causing artifacts during baking, thank you for informing me of this. I will test-bake a few of the maps I mentioned and see if I'm pleased by the results. I must have clicked the wrong video, my apologies for any confusion. I watched both your add-on's release video and update video, there must have been one that turned on somehow between them.

How exactly did you try baking AO in Blender? For High Poly or Low Poly? Do you use Zen BBQ?

No sir, I'm trying with default settings recommended online. I have not yet purchased Zen BBQ, I was hoping I could use it to shortcut my current bake times in substance painter. Truth be told, I only really discovered the addon yesterday

Can you share the results of the AO bake and explain why you're not satisfied with them?

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1528821403359645748/1529128148912967840/8A5CE87D-04FE-49D3-B9FA-DD16281516D4.png?ex=6a60cf10&is=6a5f7d90&hm=3f88d3aee82b73072195f91733c04460c9d0df6b0e91b38f01c196772e46488e& https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1528821403359645748/1529128149244444942/EB8EB580-AB6B-4B36-A4C1-CCE7D4B10D96.png?ex=6a60cf10&is=6a5f7d90&hm=c6ebc931824fd2f9588776da444e54a2b51e02a5f516f6a51c976559746e0165&

I would recommend never using Denoise for texture baking. It completely ruins fine details.