Bake & Flatten

Write the evaluated stack to the skeletal mesh, and check the smoothed result before you do.

What Bake does

Bake evaluates the layers you choose and writes the result to the mesh as skin weights. The write is all or nothing: if the mesh fails to rebuild, it is restored to its state before the bake.

The Bake and Flatten dialog

Target

Base Skin (In Place), or a new skin weight profile with a name you choose.

Layers

Tick the layers to include. The dialog counts how many of the stack's layers are selected.

LODs

The first and last LOD the bake writes.

Max influences / vertex

Influences over the limit are pruned, weakest first, and the rest are renormalised. The dialog tells you how many vertices will be pruned before you bake.

Renormalize after bake

Renormalises the written weights.

Flatten into the base

Folds the baked layers into Base Skin and removes them. Turn it off to update the mesh and leave the stack exactly as it is.

Keep a snapshot layer

When flattening, keeps the pre-bake Base Skin as a muted, locked layer, so the skin you had before stays recoverable from the stack.

Smooth Preview

You paint on the coarse mesh, so folds and pinches look harsher than they will on a subdivided game mesh. Turn on Mesh Display → Smooth Preview to see the smoothed deformed surface at level 1 or 2.