Drag2shade v1.1

Drop textures. Shade faster.

Drag2shade is a Blender extension that lets you drag and drop image files directly onto any Principled BSDF shader node. It automatically classifies the texture type and wires it into the correct slot - no menus, no manual connections.

Features

• Drag & drop images directly into the shader editor
• Smart texture classification via filename parsing and image analysis
• Detects Base Color, Roughness, Metallic, Normal, Bump, AO, Emission, Alpha/Opacity, and Displacement maps
• Alpha-aware: detects transparency and correctly routes opacity maps
• Zero configuration required

Requirements

• Blender 4.0 or later
• Extension installed via Blender's built-in extension manager

Installation

1. Open Blender and go to Edit > Preferences > Get Extensions
2. Click the dropdown arrow (top right) and choose Install from Disk
3. Select drag2shade_v1.1.zip
4. Enable the extension if it isn't already active

Usage

1. Open the Shader Editor
2. Select an object with a material using a Principled BSDF node
3. Drag an image file from your file browser into the Shader Editor or on the viewport mesh.
4. Drag2shade detects the texture type and connects it automatically

Texture Classification

Drag2shade uses a two-pass classification system:

Pass 1 - Filename keywords Common naming conventions are matched first (e.g. _basecolor, _rough, _normal, _nrm, _metal, _ao, _emit, _alpha, _disp).

Pass 2 - Image analysis If no keyword match is found, the image data is analysed:

• Grayscale images → Roughness, Metallic, AO, or Bump depending on value distribution
• Images with zero-opacity pixels → Alpha/Opacity
• Full-color images → Base Color