How to bake the sculpting details to the final mesh

[Arahnea]

Hi!
I used MPFB to make a model and then set it up for sculpting. Now I have finished the sculpt but I don't know how to bake that to the mesh. Could anyone help me by writing down the steps? I tried selecting them and bake it but it just says there are no valid selected objects

Thanks in advance!

[joepal]

What are you trying to achieve? Is the end goal a normal map, or do you want to create a morph with the new topology?

For the normal map case, there's a tutorial video at https://youtu.be/F5n8gJdDmQ8?si=K5sAuNWWikwrK8Wt

[Arahnea]

I followed the video tutorial but for some reason a lot of the detail just doesn't show up and becomes flat like in the attached picture. I tried increasing the raycast distance but then it just turns into artifacts

[joepal]

I think you're correct in playing with the ray cast distance here. My best guess is that the deformation falls outside the range that blender handles when canculating the difference between the base and the sculpt.

The method proposed in the tutorial video is intended for fine details, and it will fail horribly for larger deformations. For example, adding a pair of female breasts to an undeformed base mesh will never work using that method.

The trick here is to first do the macro deformation (such as breast size) using target sliders and then start with that as basis for the sculpt.

Now, this said: the proposed method in the video is just one of the ways to bake normal maps from sculpts. There are several others suggested in various videos on youtube. I didn't have much luck with these as they failed in other ways instead, but maybe your use case would fit better with another approach.

[Arahnea]

I finally managed to get the abs in by changing the extrusion ever so slightly!