Like pixel art, but less straightforward [3D dump]

[LeleleleMAXIMUM]

What does render baking do

tl;dr version:
Well, first you have a UV map/ an image to map to
And then you set up your lights/lamps
And Render Baking basically "prints" the lighting on the UV map
Now you have an image with all the lighting effects imprinted on it

LONG VERSION

The result is, you have an image with all the faces shaded according to the lighting you set up. What it does is, if you take your model and apply the baked UV map to it, you won't need any extravagant lighting, and it would still look like it HAS extravagant lighting.

It's used for games to save render time and memory. For example, look at my ghost thing up there. There is no lamp/light in that scene, yet there is shading on the ghost. Because I faked it with Render Baking.

Also, you can use the baked UV as a guide to shading your UV map. You'd make a new layer on top of the UV map (in photoshop or gimp), and shade over the baked map to get the shading right.


Also, yeah, that sketch's 3D counterpart kinda didn't work out for some reason. It turns up blank when I try to render bake. I'll probably try it out again some other time.