Pass

The Pass node is where the type of bake (pass) is selected and all rendering options are set. It can take any number of Mesh nodes as input (adding inputs will cause it to keep expanding to accept more). The outputs expose the combined Color and Value of pixels as well as the individual Red, Green and Blue values. Outputs can be connected in any combination to any number of Output Image Path nodes.

1. Bake Pass Button: Will validate settings and then bake this nodes pass. Any linked outputs will be updated, but only the specific linked channels. See the Bake Pass vs Image example for how this works.
   
   
2. Group & Pass: Drop down list to select bake pass. Some passes may have additional options which will appear below when selected. Tool-tips are used to explain their functions. Additionally some passes require a Principled BDSF based material on the objects, the tool-tip on the pass should list any requirements.
   
   
3. Samples: This is the number of samples taken for each pixel in the bake. For most passes (any PBR map, normals, etc) one sample is sufficient. When lighting information is needed (eg. AO pass) more samples will be needed to produce a good result. If in doubt start with one sample and increase if the result isn’t good enough.
   
   
4. Advanced Settings: Collapses or expands the more advanced or less used settings to reduce clutter and node footprint.
   
   
5. Local X and Y Resolution: These are used only to override any Resolutions nodes or when no global values are set or active.
   
   
6. Device: Simple choice between CPU or GPU as rendering device. When the node is places this will default to your scenes currently selected device. While not usually an issue when baking, if a render exceeds the available memory of your GPU it will fail. This isn’t the case for CPU making it the safe option.
   
   
7. Use Masking: Enabling this option will create a second image of the same size, where white pixels (1s) map to the UV islands of the bake and black pixels (0s) map to pixels that aren’t part of an island. This map will automatically be used when writing to the final output to leave unmasked pixels unchanged. While many bakes don’t require this, it allows for much greater flexibility in layering passes and objects into a single final image. The time taken to generate the mask is negligible, take a look at the Masking for an example.
   
   
8. Use My World: If you want to use lighting information from your scenes world in the pass, you need to enable this option and select the ‘World’ you want to use (if left blank, but enabled the currently active scenes world is used). By default Bake Wrangler uses a plain 100% white world background.
   
   
9. Use My Settings: Enabling this causes Bake Wranglers default rendering settings to be replaced with the settings from the ‘Scene’ you select (if left blank, but enabled the currently active scenes settings are used). The default render settings used by Bake Wrangler are optimized to quickly render maps without lighting information and complex data like hairs and caustics. If you need to bake lights, hairs or rays that are changed by passing through objects (glass, fog, etc) then you will need to use this setting with appropriate Cycles values set in your scene. For any PBR maps and most data maps this should be disabled for best performance.
   
   
10. Additional Pass Settings: If the selected pass has additional options they are displayed here. Use the tool-tips to see what they do, or if in doubt leave at default.