Djh Bake Batcher
If you are tired of manually setting up each bake, editing dozens of settings, painstakingly selecting objects, baking each map separately, saving each image, and fifty other steps at which you could make a mistake that wastes your time, this might be for you. Bake Batcher removes those headaches by sacrificing the flexibility of customizing all those settings, for the speed and convenience of baking in a single click.
If that piques your interest, please take a look at this short video demonstration:
Feature Highlights:
- Collection-Based Baking: The ability to bake from all objects in a high-poly collection to all objects in a low-poly collection has several benefits. It removes the need for a precise selection before baking, and the collections are aligned by matching origin empties, which means your HP and LP objects don't have to be stacked inside each other before you bake. You can also keep all your objects separate for easy editing but still experience the performance benefits of baking from a merged single object.
- Bake Everything: The 'Single-Click' design saves tons of time by removing the need to edit many settings before each bake. It will bake all the standard PBR maps (baseColor, roughness, metallic, ao, normal) at once.
- Bake a Single Map: In case you need to bake something other than standard PBR or you just need a little more control, there is also an option to bake a single map that takes advantage of as many of the automated features as it can.
- Auto-Merge and Pack: The addon merges the collections into single objects and can pack UVs before baking. This makes it easy to bake multiple objects into one set of textures without the headache of manually merging and packing the UVs. This allows sets of similar assets to share a single material, using fewer textures.
- Automated Naming and Saving: The addon automatically names and saves the baked textures to your specified output folder. This saves a huge amount of time and removes an opportunity for the easy-to-make but costly mistake of overwriting the wrong texture.
- Dedicated 'Bake' Image: Blender bakes to the currently selected image node in your shader, this can quickly mess up your materials if you forget to select the correct image after editing your material. You will at least have to bake it again, wasting time. Or in the worst case, if you don't realize and close Blender, it might ask if you want to save edited images... don't ask how I know this. The addon requires and manages an image tagged 'bake' so that you don't have to.
- Result Material Creation: After baking, a new material will be created from the baked maps. This material is assigned to a copy of the low-poly collection, ready to be finalized and exported.
- Interactive Preview Switching: Preview and switch between shader inputs directly in the viewport, allowing for quick adjustments and iterations without constantly editing your shaders.
- Render Engine Swapping: Blender can only use Cycles to bake textures. The addon will auto-switch to Cycles when it is baking, and restore the original engine once it is done. This allows you to use Eevee while you are working and also avoids any issues once you're ready to bake.
If you'd like to hear my thoughts on the problems with vanilla Blender Baking, and the reasoning behind all of the above features. I give a good overview of them in this video, which was recorded during the development of this tool: What I Dislike About Baking in Blender... and how I fixed it.
Please Note:
While DJH Bake Batcher excels in automating common baking tasks, it may not be able to fully automate baking for complex setups. The addon prioritizes speed and efficiency over flexibility, so if you're looking for total customization, this is probably the wrong tool for you and I'd recommend taking a look at some of the other excellent baking addons that are available on Blender Market. There are a lot of options.
What's Supported:
- Standard PBR - Fully Automated (bakes 5 maps at once)
- Anything Else - Single Map Automated (bakes 1 map and saves it)
- One-Click 'Bake Collection' - Only High-Poly to Low-Poly (selected to active)
- Bake Single Map - Both HP to LP and Single Object
- Formats - PNG, TGA, TIF, JPG (can add more if requested)