Baking Patterns allows users to pre-compute or "bake" pattern networks into 2D texture images or 3D point clouds. 

Bake Patterns

Add PxrBakeTexture or PxrBakePointCloud patterns into your shading network in places where you want to bake that state of the network into a texture or point cloud.  When doing regular renders, baked textures will be used by these patterns, and when doing bake renders, textures will be baked. ie. written to disk.

 

Starting a Bake Render

A bake render is essentially a batch render with one different setting. It uses the bake Hider instead of the raytrace Hider.   To start a bake render simply choose Bake Render instead of Batch Render from the RenderMan menu.   All the usual batch render preferences apply to the bake render.  The baked textures will be written to the locations specified in the individual PxrBakeTexture or PxrBakePointCloud patterns.