Auto Bake

by Sketch494. Bake entire scenes or selected objects into optimized texture atlases, with configurable bake passes, automatic UV handling, multi-format export and one-click ZIP packaging.

Download: autobake.sketch494.online · Latest release ZIP

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Why Auto Bake?

Getting assets game-ready usually means a long manual dance: unwrap, pack, create images, wire bake nodes into every material, bake pass after pass, save each map, rebuild a clean material, export, archive. Auto Bake does the entire dance in one click, and it is built for production:

• True texture atlases. All selected objects (or the whole scene) share one atlas per map. Island scale is averaged first so texel density stays uniform, and the atlas auto-grows (up to 8192) when many objects share it.
• Accurate channel captures. Base color, roughness, metallic, alpha, specular, glossiness, height, displacement and custom channels are captured through a temporary emission rig at 1 sample: noise-free, fast, and immune to the classic "metallic surfaces bake black albedo" problem.
• Zero babysitting. Missing UVs are created, missing materials are substituted, hidden objects are skipped, and every temporary node, image and setting is restored afterwards, even when a bake fails or is cancelled.

Features

• 13 bake passes: Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, Ambient Occlusion, Emission, Alpha, Specular, Glossiness, Height, Displacement, Combined, plus unlimited custom passes captured from any Principled BSDF input.
• Bake scope: selected objects or entire scene, with optional selected-to-active (high-poly → low-poly) baking with ray distance and cage extrusion controls.
• UV automation: Smart UV Project for objects without UVs, dedicated non-destructive AutoBake atlas layer, texel-density averaging, island packing with configurable margin and rotation.
• Output control: PNG / TGA / TIFF / OpenEXR, 512 to 8192 resolution, color depth and compression settings, overwrite / auto-rename / ask policies.
• Baked materials: clean Principled setup wired automatically (normal map node, alpha transparency, optional AO multiply, displacement output). Replace originals (kept safe with a fake user) or just create the material.
• Export: .blend, FBX, OBJ and glTF (GLB) in any combination, plus Export as ZIP with organized textures/ and models/ folders, optional README and license, and optional cleanup of loose files.
• Professional UX: confirmation dialogs before baking, replacing materials, overwriting files and cancelling; live progress bar with friendly stage messages and estimated remaining time; readable error messages with suggested fixes.
• Pipeline friendly: GPU/CPU selection with graceful CPU fallback, add-on preferences for studio defaults, session log with save-to-file, fully scriptable (bpy.ops.autobake.bake(sync=True) runs head-less).

Compatibility

Blender	Status	Install method
3.6 LTS	✅ tested (3.6.23)	classic add-on ZIP
4.0 / 4.1	✅ supported	classic add-on ZIP
4.2 LTS	✅ tested (4.2.22)	classic add-on ZIP or extension ZIP
4.3 to 4.5	✅ supported	classic add-on ZIP or extension ZIP
5.x (latest)	✅ tested (5.1.2)	classic add-on ZIP or extension ZIP

The version-compatibility layer transparently handles the Principled BSDF socket renames introduced in Blender 4.0 (Specular → Specular IOR Level, Emission → Emission Color, and others), UI API differences, and EEVEE material setting changes.

Installation

1. Download auto_bake.zip from the latest release (do not extract it).
2. In Blender open Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install (Blender 4.2+: the dropdown arrow → Install from Disk).
3. Select the ZIP and enable Auto Bake.
4. Find the panel in the 3D View → Sidebar (N) → Auto Bake tab.

Quick start

1. Select the objects you want to bake (or set scope to Entire Scene).
2. Pick your maps in Bake Maps (Base Color + Normal + Roughness are on by default).
3. Set the destination in Output (folder, name, format, resolution).
4. Press Bake, review the confirmation dialog, and watch the progress bar.
5. Your atlases land in textures/, models in models/, and, if enabled, everything is packaged into a ZIP.

Documentation

Full documentation, including a settings reference and a troubleshooting table, lives in docs/USER_GUIDE.md and on the project site: autobake.sketch494.online.

Building from source

python3 scripts/build_release.py       # → dist/auto_bake-<version>.zip (+ extension zip)

Run the automated end-to-end test inside any Blender build:

blender -b --factory-startup --python tests/test_headless.py -- \
    --zip dist/auto_bake-1.0.0.zip \
    --ext-zip dist/auto_bake-1.0.0-extension.zip \
    --out /tmp/autobake_test

The test installs the add-on like a user would, bakes a scene that exercises linked textures, missing UVs, material-less and non-Principled objects, then pixel-checks the atlases and validates every export. CI runs it on every release build.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later © 2026 Sketch494. Assets you bake with Auto Bake are entirely yours.