Baker — GPU Lightmapper for Blender

Baker transforms Blender’s complex, multi-step lightmap workflow into a single-click pipeline. From UV generation to atlas packing, global illumination baking, AI denoising, and export, Baker automates the entire process — saving hours of manual work. Designed for game developers, 3D artists, and architects, Baker delivers production-ready lightmaps with maximum efficiency.

Key Features:

• Automated UV Atlasing: Generates lightmap UVs using world-space box projection and packs multiple objects into a shared atlas with guillotine bin-packing.

• GPU-Accelerated Baking: Leverages Cycles fully on GPU, with configurable priority (Low / Medium / High) for speed and performance.

• Four Bake Modes: Full Global Illumination, Indirect Only, Ambient Occlusion, and Emissive for flexible lighting workflows.

• AI Denoising: OptiX for NVIDIA GPUs with automatic OIDN fallback for other hardware, ensuring clean, noise-free results.

• Directional Lightmaps: Optional pass encoding dominant light direction for enhanced normal-map shading.

• LOD Support: Automatically propagates UV layouts to LOD siblings for consistent atlasing across multiple detail levels.

• Light Probe Baking: Bakes L1 spherical harmonic irradiance at probe objects and exports data as JSON for dynamic objects.

• Flexible Export: Supports PNG and EXR formats, with configurable output directories and automatic folder creation.

• Non-Destructive Workflow: All material overrides and render settings are fully restored after every bake, even on failure.

• VRAM Estimation: Alerts you if a bake may exceed GPU memory before starting.

• Configurable Quality: Adjust texels-per-unit, max resolution (512–8192), GI bounces (0–16), samples (1–4096), padding, ray bias, and backface culling.

• Blender N-panel UI: Lives in the 3D Viewport sidebar, showing live progress and allowing ESC to cancel at any time.

Baker is the fast, reliable, and professional solution for generating high-quality lightmaps in Blender without the manual hassle, perfect for modern game development pipelines.

Baker — User Documentation

Version 1.0.0 · Egret Studios LLC · 2026

🌟 What is Baker?

Baker is a GPU Lightmapper for Blender that automates the entire lightmap baking workflow. Instead of manually unwrapping UVs, setting up textures, configuring Cycles, denoising, and exporting, Baker does it all in one click.

• Hit Bake All → walk away → come back to finished, denoised, exported lightmaps, ready to drop into your game engine. ⚡

• Works for small scenes or large game levels with dozens of objects.

Perfect for:

• Game assets 🕹️

• Architecture visualization 🏛️

• Product design renders 🛍️

• Any Blender scene that needs baked lighting

🖥️ Requirements

• Blender 4.0 or newer (Blender 5.x supported)

• A saved .blend file (mandatory for output paths)

• At least one mesh object with a material assigned

• GPU recommended for speed, but CPU works too

📥 Installation

1. Download baker.zip.

2. Open Blender → Edit → Preferences → Add-ons.

3. Click Install from Disk… → select baker.zip.

4. Enable Baker by checking the box.

5. Close Preferences → press N in the 3D Viewport → open Baker tab.

✅ You’re ready to bake!

🚀 Quick Start

1. Open your scene in Blender. Save your file first!

2. Press N → click the Baker tab.

3. Click Bake All ⚡

What happens:

• Baker unwraps UVs automatically

• Packs all objects into a shared atlas

• Bakes lighting with Cycles

• Applies denoising

• Saves lightmaps in lightmaps/ next to your .blend file

🎉 Done! Your scene is ready for export.

🖼️ Understanding the Output

Baker generates one shared atlas texture:

• Bright areas → surfaces hit directly by light

• Dark areas → shadows and occluded surfaces

• Black space → unused atlas space (normal!)

Output files:

FileDescriptionblendname_scene_lightmap.pngMain baked lightmap atlasblendname_scene_direction.pngDirectional lightmap (if enabled)blendname_light_probes.jsonLight probe data (optional)

🧩 Baker Panel — Section by Section

Preset

Choose a preset to automatically adjust quality.

PresetDescriptionSimpleFast, low-res preview (16 samples, 1024 resolution). Great for iterating.AdvancedHigh-quality production bake (256 samples, 4096 resolution).CustomFull control over every setting.

Render Mode

Decide what kind of light gets baked.

ModeUse CaseFullAll lighting — direct, bounced, shadows. Ideal for game lightmaps.IndirectOnly bounced light (global illumination). Direct lighting handled in-engine.AOAmbient Occlusion only. Great for depth and crevices.EmissiveCapture glowing materials (neon, lava, lights).

UV Atlasing

Controls texture space allocation:

• Texels / Unit → Detail density (more texels = sharper lightmaps)

• Max Resolution → Maximum texture size (2048–4096 recommended for large scenes)

• Atlas Padding → Gap between UV islands to prevent color bleed (default 4px)

Advanced:

• LOD Mode → Auto bake LODs by naming convention (Tree_LOD0, Tree_LOD1…)

Tip: For 50+ objects in a single atlas, use 4096 resolution for best results.

Global Illumination

Quality of bounced light:

• Light Bounces → Number of light reflections (3–5 is usually enough)

• Bake Samples → Rays per pixel (16–32 for preview, 128–512 for final)

• Ray Bias → Prevent self-shadowing (small adjustment if needed)

• Backface Culling → Ignore back faces to speed up baking

Denoising

Removes noise after baking automatically:

• Denoising → Master toggle

• OptiX AI → NVIDIA RTX GPUs only, fast and high quality

• OIDN Fallback → CPU-based, works on any system

If both are off, raw lightmaps are saved without denoising.

GPU & Output

• GPU Priority → High (fast), Medium/Low (slower, less strain)

• Output Format → PNG (16-bit, game-ready) or EXR (32-bit HDR)

• Output Path → //lightmaps/ next to your .blend or any folder

• Directional Lightmap → Optional second texture with light direction

• Est. VRAM → Shows memory requirement; reduce resolution if red

Actions

• Bake All → Entire scene, single atlas

• Bake Selected → Only selected objects

• Bake Light Probes → Generate SH data for dynamic objects

Progress bar shows object names, ESC cancels safely.

Warnings

• Overwrite Warning → Stops before replacing files

• VRAM Warning → Alerts if memory estimate is too high

💡 Tips for Best Results

• Save first! Baker needs a saved .blend.

• Start with Simple → fast iteration, then Advanced for final bake.

• Expect dark areas → shadows and occlusions are normal.

• Atlas won’t be 100% full → 75–85% fill is expected.

• Objects without materials → skipped automatically.

• Increase samples → if lightmaps are noisy; denoising handles minor noise.

⚠️ Troubleshooting

• Output path issues → Use //lightmaps/ or absolute path; folder auto-created.

• Very dark lightmaps → Check lights and assigned materials.

• Large black regions → Normal; increase Texels/Unit if needed.

• Blurry lightmaps → Increase Max Resolution.

• Noisy lightmaps → Increase Bake Samples, ensure Denoising is on.

• OptiX not available → Baker falls back to OIDN.

• Cancelled bake looks different → Ctrl+Z to undo, Baker restores scene automatically.

❓ FAQ

• Does Baker work with Eevee?
  No. Only Cycles is used for baking; Eevee can still display the scene.

• Does Baker permanently change my scene?
  No. Temporary changes are restored after baking.

• Can I bake just one object?
  Yes. Select it → Bake Selected.

• Why only one atlas file?
  Baker packs all objects into a single shared atlas — this is correct.

• Can I bake multiple scenes?
  Yes. Baker bakes the active scene only.

• Can I control the filename?
  {blendname}_{scenename}_lightmap.png. Rename the scene in Blender to control the second part.

• How full should my atlas be?
  75–85% fill is normal; remaining space is unavoidable UV packing overhead.

🎯 Recommended Settings by Use Case

Quick Preview

• Preset: Simple

• Max Resolution: 1024

• Samples: 16

• Denoising: On

Small Production Scene (<20 objects)

• Preset: Advanced

• Max Resolution: 2048

• Samples: 128

• Denoising: On

Large Production Scene (>50 objects)

• Preset: Custom

• Max Resolution: 4096

• Samples: 32–64

• Denoising: On

• Overwrite Warning: Off

Baker — Egret Studios LLC © 2026