John Deligiannis
Atlas Bake - A blender Add-on for Texture Baking
Bake clean, engine-ready textures (BaseColor, Normal, Metallic, Roughness, AO, Opacity), build custom channel packs, handle UVs, project High→Low, and export FBX, all in a safe background subprocess so your open .blend stays untouched.
Blender 4.2+ Windows · macOS · Linux GPL-3.0-or-later
What's New
Latest Update Highlights
This release (v2) brings major workflow improvements for working with multiple objects, parallel baking, and richer export control:
- Multi-mesh baking: Select multiple meshes and bake them all in a single job. Each mesh gets its own textures, UV pass, and material configuration.
- Parallel task queue: Start bakes on multiple objects simultaneously. A new Tasks panel tracks every job's name, state (Running / Done / Error / Canceled), and live progress bar. Jobs persist across Blender sessions.
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Task Name & output subfolders: Each bake job requires a Task Name. Results are saved under
Output Folder / Task Name /, so runs for different iterations never overwrite each other. - FBX export sub-options: When Export FBX is enabled, three new sub-options appear: Include Armature (skeleton & weights, on by default), Include Shape Keys (blend shapes, on by default), and Include Animations (NLA actions, off by default).
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Keep Final .blend: Writes a single clean
.blendinto your output folder containing all baked meshes and their textures together, without touching your working file. - High→Low restriction: When Bake to Target is active, only one source mesh is allowed; selecting more blocks the bake with a clear error.
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Home icon shortcut: Click the home icon next to the Output Folder path to auto-set it to the folder of the current
.blendfile.
Overview
Texture baking condenses complex, multi-material shaders into a compact set of textures ready for engines like Unity and Unreal. Engines expect specific color spaces and often packed channels (Unity’s Metallic+Smoothness, Unreal/glTF’s ORM).
Typical manual steps
- Pick Cycles + samples
- Ensure correct UVs
- Create images & color spaces
- Handle scalar reroutes (Metal/Rough)
- Normals (OpenGL/DirectX)
- AO / Opacity
- Packed outputs (ex. MS/HDRP/ORM)
- Build atlas material & export
Atlas Bake solves this
Automates end-to-end with safe defaults and clear status.
- Correct color spaces per map
- OpenGL (Y+) / DirectX (Y−) normals
- Custom channel packs with presets
- Smart UV or Use Selected UV
- High→Low baking (max ray, cage, extrusion)
- Atlas material & optional FBX export
- Runs in a background headless Blender subprocess
- Multi-mesh baking in a single job
- Parallel task queue with live progress
A simple baking process. Design philosophy: simple workflow, uncluttered UI. If a control feels essential and is missing, let me know, the goal is to stay lean while adding high-value options.
Key features at a glance
- Per-map baking: Base Color (sRGB), Emission (sRGB), Normal (Non-Color), Metallic (Non-Color), Roughness (Non-Color), AO (Non-Color), Opacity (Non-Color). Metallic & Roughness use a safe temporary Emission reroute for scalar accuracy.
- Material selection (whitelist): Only included materials are processed in Atlas/Smart-UV.
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Custom Packs: Build your own packs, or use the presets MS, HDRP Mask, ORM. Dependency-aware and reusable via a preferences folder (absolute and
//relative paths supported). -
UV handling: MANUAL (pick existing UV) or SMART (auto-create & unwrap
AtlasBakedUVwith Angle Limit & Island Margin; applied to included materials).
- High→Low projected baking: Selected→Active (one source mesh) with Max Ray Distance, Cage Object, or Virtual Cage Extrusion.
- Exports: Optional FBX per mesh (UV0 enforced) with sub-options for Include Armature, Include Shape Keys, and Include Animations. Option to Keep Final .blend (all baked meshes in one file, relative or packed paths).
- Normals: OpenGL (Y+) or DirectX (Y−) with optional Flip Normal Y.
- Performance & Quality: GPU Compute (optional), Resolution, Bake Margin (px) vs UV Island Margin.
- Multi-mesh baking: Select multiple meshes and bake them all in a single job — each gets its own textures, UV pass, and material whitelist configurable per mesh.
- Parallel task queue: Start bakes on multiple objects simultaneously. The Tasks panel tracks every job (Running / Done / Error / Canceled) with a live progress bar. Jobs persist across Blender sessions; if Blender closes mid-bake the task is restored as an error with the last known progress.
- Clear status & safe operation: Work runs in a background, headless Blender subprocess using a temporary copy. Your open file remains responsive and unmodified while it receives regularly updates about the progress.