Chroma3mf is a Blender extension designed to structure and optimize the transfer of color data to the .3mf (3D Manufacturing Format) standard, ensuring consistency between the authoring environment and slicing/3D printing software.

Its primary objective is the correct serialization of color information — derived from textures — within the 3MF specifications, preserving the correspondence between chromatic attributes and mesh geometry.

3MF Export with Textures

Chroma 3mf is able to export .3mf files with embedded textures. This mode is intended for full-color printers that support textures.

Texture → Face Color Conversion

The plugin features a workflow optimized specifically for multicolor FDM printers. The technical pipeline operates in two distinct stages:

• Intelligent Analysis and Baking: The system parses Blender material nodes to sample colors and converts them into Face Color Attributes.

• Real-Time Preview: A preview material is automatically generated to provide immediate visualization of the baking result, allowing for perceptual verification before the final export.

Target Palette:

This is the central module for palette definition and control. Users can generate a palette via Automatic Extraction from assigned materials or Manual Generation using a color picker. It includes Color Remapping capabilities to define a maximum color count and perform color quantization, optimizing the output for 3D printer limits while maintaining consistency with the actual texture mapping.

Baking

The baking process:

• Duplicates the original mesh

• Transfers color data into Color Attributes

• Prepares the model for standard 3MF export for multicolor FDM Printers

Face Painter

You can manually apply colors from your active palette to specific faces of the model for precise adjustments.

Export Options

The Export command opens the final configuration with the following options:

• Selection Only: Exports only the active object.

• Merge Meshes: Combines multiple objects into a single mesh, sometimes useful for better slicing.

• Export Textures from Materials: Texture-based export with UV preservation.

• ColorGroup (Standard 3MF): Exports only the color data derived from baking, compliant with the 3MF ColorGroup specification.