Quick Bake Tool v1.0 — One-Click PBR Baking for Blender 4.2+

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Quick Bake Tool v1.0 — One-Click PBR Baking for Blender 4.2+

Hey everyone,

I don’t know about you, but I dread the baking workflow in Blender. Every time I need a PBR texture set, it’s the same 15-minute ritual: switch to Cycles, create an image, add an Image Texture node, make sure it’s selected, set the color space, configure bake settings, hit bake, repeat for the next map, then manually save each image. For a standard game-ready set that’s 50+ clicks before anything actually bakes.

So I built Quick Bake Tool — a single N-Panel where you pick a preset, hit one button, and all your textures are baked, named correctly, and saved to disk. That’s it.

I’ve been using it on my own game asset projects and it’s turned a 15-minute chore into a 30-second task. Figured other people might find it useful too.

Try it here: https://gamecards.gumroad.com/l/qshlm

How It Works

  1. Select your mesh object
  2. Pick a preset (Game Ready, Arch-Viz, Stylized, Full PBR, or Custom)
  3. Click BAKE ALL
  4. Done — textures are in your output folder

The addon handles everything behind the scenes: switches to Cycles, creates images with correct resolution and color spaces, sets up bake target nodes, bakes each map, saves to disk, cleans up all temp nodes, and restores your original render engine.

If your object has no UVs, it auto-creates them via Smart UV Project. No material? Creates a default Principled BSDF. You literally just need a mesh and one click.

Features

5 Built-In Presets

  • Game Ready — Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, AO. The standard set for Unity, Unreal, Godot.
  • Arch-Viz — Base Color, Roughness, Normal, AO. Clean set for architectural visualization.
  • Stylized — Base Color, Emission, Normal. For hand-painted and stylized workflows.
  • Full PBR — All 8 PBR maps at once.
  • Custom — Toggle any combination manually.

10 Map Types
Base Color, Roughness, Metallic, Normal, AO, Emission, Specular, Opacity, Curvature, Combined. Each map gets the correct color space automatically (sRGB for color, Non-Color for data maps).

Individual Map Baking
Every map type has its own bake button next to the toggle. Need just a normal map? One click.

Batch Bake
Select multiple mesh objects, click Batch Bake. Each object gets its own named texture set (Chair_BaseColor.png, Chair_Normal.png, Table_BaseColor.png, etc.). No manual object switching.

High → Low Poly
Select your high-poly as source, make the low-poly active, enable High → Low, adjust cage extrusion, bake. Perfect for sculpt-to-game workflows. The addon configures selected_to_active and cage settings for you.

Auto-Export
Baked textures are saved instantly as PNG, EXR (32-bit), TGA, or JPEG. Output folder, naming convention, and format are all configurable. Works even with unsaved .blend files (falls back to a temp directory).

Smart Cleanup
One button removes all Quick Bake generated images from your .blend file without touching your other textures.

Object Status
The panel shows at a glance whether your active object has UVs and materials — green checkmarks or red warnings. No more guessing why the bake failed.

Settings

Setting Default What It Does
Resolution 1024 × 1024 512, 1024, 2048, or 4096
Samples 64 Render quality for baking
Margin 16 px UV island bleeding
Format PNG PNG, EXR, TGA, JPEG
Auto UV On Smart UV Project if no UVs
Auto-Export On Save to disk immediately

Details

  • Blender: 4.2, 4.5, 5.0, 5.1+ (version-guarded API for full forward compatibility)
  • Render Engine: Cycles (switches automatically, restores your engine after baking)
  • Panel Location: N-Panel → “Quick Bake” tab
  • Price: €5 on Gumroad
  • **Gumroad: https://gamecards.gumroad.com/l/qshlm

Installation

  1. Download the .zip (don’t unzip it)
  2. Blender → Edit → Preferences → Get Extensions → ≡ → Install from Disk → select the .zip
  3. Done — the “Quick Bake” tab appears in the N-Panel (press N)

macOS note: Safari auto-extracts ZIPs. If your download became a folder, right-click → Compress to re-zip it.

Why Not Just Use SimpleBake?

Fair question. SimpleBake is a great tool with more options. Quick Bake Tool is for people who want speed over configurability. The entire philosophy is: presets instead of menus, one button instead of ten steps, auto-setup instead of manual configuration. If you’ve ever wished baking in Blender was as simple as pressing Export in Substance Painter — that’s what this tries to be.

At €5 it’s also a pretty low-risk purchase if you’re curious.

Changelog

v1.0

  • 10 bake map types (Base Color, Roughness, Metallic, Normal, AO, Emission, Specular, Opacity, Curvature, Combined)
  • 5 presets (Game Ready, Arch-Viz, Stylized, Full PBR, Custom)
  • One-click BAKE ALL with auto Cycles switching
  • Individual map bake buttons
  • Batch bake for multiple selected objects
  • High → Low Poly baking with cage extrusion
  • Auto UV creation (Smart UV Project)
  • Auto material creation (Principled BSDF)
  • Auto-export to PNG, EXR, TGA, JPEG
  • Configurable resolution (512–4096), samples, margin
  • Object status display (UV/Material check)
  • Clean Bake Images utility
  • Open Output Folder button
  • Unsaved .blend file fallback (temp directory)
  • Blender 4.2–5.1+ compatible with version-guarded API
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