Tachyon Texture Tools — Documentation

Blender 3.3 – 5.2 · Windows 10/11 for the tab, any OS in a browser · Free

Blender 3.3–5.2 · Windows 10/11 inside Blender, any system in a browser · Free

Tachyon's Texture Tools inside Blender, in a workspace tab of their own. Three utilities for getting a set of maps ready for a material — ORM Packer, ORM Unpacker and Rename / Resize / Convert — open next to Layout and Modeling, so none of it means leaving Blender's window. Everything runs on your own computer: the add-on serves the tool to itself, and no file you load is ever uploaded.

Requirements - please read before downloading

• Windows 10 or 11 for the tab inside Blender. It is shown by the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime, which comes with Windows 11 and most up-to-date Windows 10 installs and is a free download from Microsoft otherwise. On macOS and Linux the button opens the same tool in your default web browser instead.
• Blender 3.3 - 5.2 - one zip for all of them: an extension on 4.2 and later, a classic add-on on 3.3 to 4.1.
• Free. No price, no account, no licence key: GPL-2.0-or-later, from Tachyon Studio.
• Network: local only. The add-on serves the tool to itself on 127.0.0.1 (localhost); nothing is uploaded and no internet connection is needed.
• Saving into your folders needs a folder, not loose files. In a web browser it also needs Chrome or Edge.
• 8 bits per channel. Every file the tools write is 8-bit. EXR and other HDR formats are not supported.

Installation

Blender 4.2+ (Extension): drag tachyon_texture_tools-x.x.x-blender3.3-5.2.zip onto Blender's window, or Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Get Extensions ▸ drop-down ▸ Install from Disk… and pick it. The same Install from Disk… entry under Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons works too.

Blender 3.3 – 4.1 (Add-on): Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Install… and pick the same zip.

Make sure Tachyon Texture Tools is enabled.

A welcome message appears once after installing, and once after each update, with the first steps and links to this documentation and the Discord.

Getting started

1. In the 3D Viewport press N and open the Tachyon tab.
2. In the Texture Tools panel click Open Texture Tools. The first click makes a Texture Tools workspace tab and switches to it; later clicks switch to it.
3. Pick a tool along the top of the page, drop your files or a folder onto it, and download or save the result.
4. Click ← Back to Blender (top right of the page), or any other tab, when you are done. The tool waits in its tab exactly as you left it.

Or, instead of the tab, pick Texture Tools from any area's Editor Type menu (see In any area or window).

The Texture Tools tab

The tab holds the tool and nothing else. Blender's top bar and status bar stay, so moving between Texture Tools and your work is what it always is: the tabs.

• Leaving and returning. Another tab hides the tool; the Texture Tools tab shows it again with the same files loaded and the same settings. Hidden is not closed.
• ← Back to Blender switches to the tab you opened Texture Tools from.
• Saved with the .blend. Open a file saved on the Texture Tools tab and the tool starts by itself. Opening a different file closes the tool and clears what was loaded; the History keeps the session, so Restore puts it back.
• Rename it if you like. The add-on knows its tab by a marker, not by its name, and never takes a tab of your own called "Texture Tools" for it.
• Keys follow the pointer. Over the page, typing goes to the page; over Blender's top bar or status bar, it goes to Blender. Browser shortcuts such as F5 are switched off, so a stray key cannot reload the page and throw away what is loaded.
• Downloads ask where to save. Inside Blender every download opens an ordinary Windows Save dialog instead of landing in Downloads unseen.
• Join Discord in the page's header opens the invite in your own browser.

In any area or window

Texture Tools is in every area's Editor Type menu, next to Blender's own editors. Choose it and that area shows the tool, with the area's header kept above it — in any window, so a second window on another monitor works too (View ▸ Area ▸ Duplicate Area into New Window, then pick Texture Tools there).

• One place at a time. The tool shows where you opened it most recently — a Texture Tools area or the Texture Tools tab. Any other Texture Tools area says so and has Show Here in its header, which brings the tool over with its files and settings.
• ← Back to Blender in an area switches it back to the editor it was.
• Closing the window that shows the tool closes the tool. It starts again the next time you open it; Restore in the History brings your session back.
• Blender's menus open behind the tool. A menu that drops down over the tool is hidden behind it, including the Editor Type menu in the tool's own header. Use ← Back to Blender, or point at the header and use the Editor Type shortcuts (Shift+F5 for the 3D Viewport, and so on).

ORM Packer

Packs up to three greyscale maps into the red, green and blue channels of one PNG, with an optional fourth map in alpha.

• Channel order — ORM (R = AO, G = Roughness, B = Metallic; glTF and Unreal), RMA, MRO or AMR. Pick what your engine or shader reads.
• Single — one material, one slot per map. Select textures takes several files at once and places them by name; a single file dropped on a slot goes into that slot whatever it is called.
• Batch — drop files or a whole folder (subfolders are scanned too), or use select a folder. Maps are grouped into materials by name, so Wood_Oak_AO.png, Wood_Oak_Roughness.png and Wood_Oak_Metallic.png become one Wood_Oak material.
• Missing maps — an empty channel is filled: AO white (255), Roughness mid-grey (128), Metallic black (0), or black or white for any channel if you choose. One map is enough to pack.
• Source channel — each map is read from its red channel (or its grey) by default; pick green, blue or alpha when what you want is stored there.
• Preview — look at the result as RGB or one channel at a time (R, G, B, A) before saving it.
• Output — Download PNG in Single, Download as ZIP in Batch, or Save next to originals, which writes each packed PNG into the folder its maps came from, replacing a file of the same name there. That option needs a folder you dropped or picked.

Which files a scan picks up

Select textures, a dropped folder and Batch mode place only AO, Roughness, Metallic and Emissive maps. The map type is read from the end of the filename, where naming conventions put it: whichever map word ends last in the name decides.

Skipped files are listed by name, never pushed into whatever slot is empty. To use one anyway, drop it on its slot by hand in Single mode.

The Emissive channel

An Emissive map — found by emissive, emission, emit, glow, or a whole _E — goes into the alpha channel. Leave its slot empty and alpha stays solid 255, fully opaque.

Where the emission is black, the PNG's alpha is 0, and image viewers hide pixels whose alpha is 0 — so a viewer shows only the glowing parts, or nothing at all. The AO, Roughness and Metallic data are all still there; the R, G and B buttons under the preview show them. For a file that looks right in any viewer, leave the Emissive slot empty.

ORM Unpacker

The packer run backwards: one packed texture in, up to four greyscale maps out.

• Channel order — Auto reads each file's order from its name (_ORM, _ARM, _RMA, _MRO, _AMR; _ARM and _ORM both mean R = AO, G = Roughness, B = Metallic) and assumes ORM when unsure. Pick an order to force it for files that carry no tag.
• What comes out — Base_AO.png, Base_Roughness.png, Base_Metallic.png and, when the alpha channel carries something, Base_Alpha.png. Wood_Oak_ORM.png unpacks to Wood_Oak_AO.png and the rest.
• Flat channels — a channel with one value everywhere is what a packer writes for a missing map, so it comes out unticked, labelled with its value. Tick it if you want it as a file anyway.
• Precision — PNG sources are decoded directly and come back bit-for-bit as they were packed. Other formats go through the browser's decoder; where a texture is partly transparent the colour under the transparency can come back slightly off, and the panel says so when it happens.
• Batch — drop packed textures or a folder. While the order is on Auto, a file with no _ORM-style tag in its name is skipped and listed.
• Output — download (a ZIP as soon as there is more than one file), or Save next to originals.

Rename / Resize / Convert

Renaming is always on; resizing and converting are one tick each.

• Rename (find → replace) — add rules; each replaces every occurrence of its find text. 4k → 1k and PNG → jpg turn Metal01_diffuse_4k-PNG into Metal01_diffuse_1k-jpg. Matching is case-insensitive by default, and add if missing appends the replacement to names that lack the find text.
• Also resize the textures — square presets from 128 to 4096, or Custom… for an exact width and height. Keep aspect ratio fits the image inside that size instead of stretching it. Large reductions are done by halving repeatedly, which is cleaner than one big stretch.
• Also change the file format — PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF (8-bit, Deflate), BMP, RAW (pixel bytes with no header) or SVG (the bitmap wrapped in an <svg> tag — not a vectorisation, and Blender will not take it as a texture). JPEG and WebP take a Quality value. Unticked, each file keeps its own format; only formats nothing here can write, such as GIF, become PNG.
• Suffix — appended after the rename rules, and empty by default. Add one when re-encoding into the same folder, so the new files sit beside the originals instead of over them.
• Why the two ticks matter — with neither ticked nothing is decoded: every file keeps its exact bytes, and the originals can be renamed where they sit. Tick either and the pixels are written again, so the results are new files.

Output is chosen to match the run until you pick one yourself:

• Rename the originals in place — offered only when nothing is re-encoded. A file whose new name already exists is skipped, not overwritten, and two files heading for the same name stop the run before anything is written.
• Download as ZIP — everything in one file.
• Put back into original folder — each new image is written into the folder it came from.
• Place in new folder — with One folder per source set ticked, one output folder per source folder, named through the same rename rules: Metal_A-4k and Metal_B-4k become Metal_A-1k and Metal_B-1k. Untick it for a single folder you name.

Session History

The History bar at the top of the page keeps your sessions on this computer, saved as you work.

• A session holds the tool you were on, every setting, your rename rules and the folders you loaded — and copies of the files themselves, in the staging folder.
• Continue your last session? is asked whenever Texture Tools opens. Continue restores it, files and all; Start fresh starts a new session and keeps the last one in the list. Until you choose, nothing is written into the last session.
• Restore puts the selected session back, files included. A folder you let it reopen is read again from disk, so results can still go next to the originals; everything else, loose files too, comes back from the staging folder. To save staged files straight into their folder again, pick the folder again (Restore says which).
• New starts a fresh session and keeps the current one in the list. Rename, × and Manage… tidy the list; the newest 60 sessions are kept.
• ▾ shows what happened in the session.
• Save .txt writes a session out, settings and all but without its folders, which cannot travel; Load .txt reads one back.

Inside Blender the History is kept in %LOCALAPPDATA%\TachyonTextureTools\WebView2, per Windows user and outside the add-on, so it survives Blender restarts and updating or reinstalling never wipes it. In a web browser the page keeps its own, separate History.

The staging folder is %LOCALAPPDATA%\TachyonTextureTools\Staging, or a folder you choose in the preferences. Each file is stored once, named by its content, however many sessions use it. The newest 10 sessions keep their copies (a preference); older sessions keep their settings. The copies never leave your computer.

Preferences

Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Tachyon Texture Tools:

• Open Texture Tools — the same button as in the sidebar.
• Sessions — Keep copies of loaded files (on by default), the Staging Folder, Sessions Kept (10) and how much is stored; Open Staging Folder and Clear Staged Files.
• Sidebar Tab — the name of the sidebar tab that holds the button: Tachyon (the default), TTT, Tachyon Texture Tools, or Custom with a name you type. Naming another add-on's tab puts the button beside its panels.
• Texture Tools tab always in the top bar — off by default. When on, the tab is added whenever Blender starts or a file is opened, and you stay on the tab you are on; ticking it adds the tab straight away. It only acts where the tab can run: Windows, with WebView2.
• When the tab cannot run on this computer, the preferences say why, and that the button opens your browser instead.
• Documentation and Join Discord, and the installed version.

Opening it in a browser instead

On macOS and Linux, on Windows without the WebView2 Runtime, or when the page keeps closing, Open Texture Tools opens the same tool in your default web browser and says why in Blender's status bar. The page is still served by Blender on 127.0.0.1, so keep Blender open while you use it. Every tool works there; saving straight into folders needs Chrome or Edge, and other browsers download instead.

Troubleshooting

• The tab stays on "Loading Texture Tools…", or says it is taking a while to start → the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime is missing or damaged. Install the free Evergreen Runtime from https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2/ and restart Blender.
• "Texture Tools can't run inside Blender on this machine. It opened in your browser instead." → the status bar and Blender's Info log say why; "needs the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime" means the runtime is missing, as above. The tool works in the browser in the meantime.
• "Texture Tools closed unexpectedly. Reopening it" → it restarts by itself. If it keeps closing, it opens in your browser instead; restart Blender to try the tab again.
• Save next to originals or Rename in place is greyed out → those need a folder you dropped or picked with select a folder, not loose files.
• The scan skipped my map → its name does not end in an AO, Roughness, Metallic or Emissive word, or ends in another map's. Rename it, or drop it on its slot by hand.
• My packed PNG looks empty in an image viewer → an Emissive map is in its alpha channel; see The Emissive channel above.
• My History is empty → the browser and the tab each keep their own, and so does each Windows user. If another program held port 43131 when Blender started, the add-on used the next free port, which keeps a separate History; close that program and restart Blender.

Support

Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/T4CkhDghNP — the Join Discord button is in the tool's header, in the preferences and in the welcome message. Include your Blender and Windows versions, and what the status bar said.

A free tool from Tachyon Studio, from the same family as the Tachyon Trim Sheet Maker.