aeronmiles / addon_bake_groups

blender-addon to bake materials to textures, create atlas uvmaps out of group-UVs and bake it

addon_bake_groups

Install:

• download as zip
• open blender > edit > preferences > addons > install... > select downloaded zip-file
• search for 'bake' or and select 'Bake Groups':

How to use: In order to render your material to textures you obviously need:

1. a valid uvmap on your mesh
2. images to render onto
3. Set render-engine to cycles: scene-properties->render-engine cycles
4. find 'bake groups'-panel:

2 = Create 'bake group'
3 = process all(!) 'bake groups' and bake its textures (blender will become unresponsive during the whole process! This might take a while. The only feedback can be seen in the console)
1 = save the textures afterwards. Caution: The textures need to have a valid filepath (saved somewhere or loaded it from file)

Once you created a 'bake group' you can:
1 = add slot to the bakegroup for which the material should be baked to the textures. Adding multiple objects will try to bake all materials to the specified texture(s)
2 = select object for this slot
3 = the uv-map used for baking (if building multiple objects make sure its uvmaps do not intersect)
4 = add bake-type
5 = choose type of baking( 'DIFFUSE', 'ROUGHNESS', 'AO', 'SHADOW', 'NORMAL', 'UV', 'EMIT', 'ENVIRONMENT', 'COMBINED', 'GLOSSY', 'TRANSMISSION', 'SUBSURFACE' )
6 = choose the image this bake-command should bake to 7 = show influence-options (if bake-type has any)
8 = bake this group only (blender will become unresponsive during the whole process! This might take a while. The only feedback can be seen in the console)
9 = hide/show all the details

If using multiple materials that intersect their uvmaps or using multiple objects to build a atlas-map you can use the 'atlas creator'. You can find it in the uveditor's sidebar (toggle with 'n'-key)
1 = select 'bake group'
2 = specify name for the uvmap to be generated
3 = separate uvmaps so they have their own space (only needed if uvmaps intersect)
3a) using the 'pack multi-materials on one uv-slot' will use the space for one object and pack all material-uvmaps onto it.
4 = remove uvmaps with the same name before (re)generating a new one
5 = automatically set 'bake uv-map' for each object in the bake-group to the new one 'Create UVMap' = Generates the new uvmap and shows it immediately

VIDEO:
Small video overview how to use the plugin