Get a UV texture of a models surface

Hey all!

What i was asking myselfe was:

Is it possible to get a single texture out of a models surface with its current lighting? The idea is to use this for a static model with a static lightsource and to save some power on this way.

For example : Ive got a (UV Maped) ball and give him a bump diffuse material and it is lighted by a directional light. Now i want to store the current state of the balls surface in a single (UV) texture so i can use this texture with a simple diffuse material and still have the impression of being bumped.

Can someone imagine to make it happen by a Script oder a Shader? Or is there a good external tool to do things like this?

Greetings Magistrix

it's called lightmapping. unity has lightmapping: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/LightmappingInDepth.html

in your 3d package of choice you can also roll your own system.

of note: you want to use a second set of uvs. imagine a crate that has the same wood texture applied to each face, meaning all the uv faces are on top of each other...not very good for baking in light info. the solution is to add a second set of uvs where each face has unique non overlapping uvs. Of course doing this will quickly lead to large textures for lightmapping a level. This causes your light info to appear blurry and not capable of storing the small details. normal maps and cascading shadows certainly pick up the slack but at a performance cost.

Google it. I like Crazybump myself