Bake Cage
Envelope mesh that controls ray distance
Also known as: Cage · Cage mesh · Envelope
Definition
A bake cage is an inflated copy of the low-poly mesh used as the outer boundary for normal/AO/curvature bake rays. For each surface point on the low-poly, the baker traces a ray from inside the cage through that point and out — the first high-poly surface it hits becomes the source for the baked data. A correct cage avoids both ray "misses" (too tight, geometry skips) and "skews" (too loose, picks up wrong details).
In production
Marmoset Toolbag's "Skew Painter" lets you paint cage adjustments per-vertex, fixing problem zones (eye sockets, mouth interiors, ear cavities) without remaking the whole cage. This is the single most important fix for baking artefacts on character heads.
