Bake Materials to UV

A Blender add-on that bakes PBR materials into UE5-ready textures. Produces an optimized texture set with ORM channel packing, matching the standard Substance Painter to Unreal Engine workflow.

Requirements

• Blender 4.0 or later
• Object must have at least one material using the Principled BSDF shader
• Object must have a UV map
• At least one image must exist in the blend file (used to determine bake resolution)

Installation

1. Open Blender and go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons
2. Click Install... and select bake_materials_to_uv.py
3. Enable the add-on by checking the box next to Bake Materials to UV

Usage

1. Select a mesh object in the 3D Viewport
2. Right-click to open the Object Context Menu
3. Click Bake Materials to UV
4. In the dialog that appears:
   • UV Map — choose which UV map to bake onto
   • Target Image — choose an existing image to determine the bake resolution (e.g., a 1024x1024 image will produce 1024x1024 textures)
5. Click OK to start baking
6. When baking completes, a file browser will open — choose a folder to save the output textures

Output

Five PNG files are saved using UE5 naming conventions:

File	Description
T_{Name}_BC.png	Base Color (albedo)
T_{Name}_N.png	Normal map (tangent space)
T_{Name}_ORM.png	Packed: Ambient Occlusion (R), Roughness (G), Metallic (B)
T_{Name}_E.png	Emissive color
T_{Name}_O.png	Opacity (alpha)

Importing into Unreal Engine 5

Opaque materials (wood, plastic, metal, etc.)

1. Import T_{Name}_BC, T_{Name}_N, and T_{Name}_ORM
2. Create a new Material, set Blend Mode to Opaque (default)
3. Connect:
   • T_{Name}_BC to Base Color
   • T_{Name}_N to Normal
   • T_{Name}_ORM Red channel to Ambient Occlusion
   • T_{Name}_ORM Green channel to Roughness
   • T_{Name}_ORM Blue channel to Metallic
4. Set the ORM and Normal textures to Linear Color (not sRGB) in the texture asset settings

Tip: Use a single TextureSampleParameter2D for the ORM texture and split channels with a BreakOutFloat3Components node (or just use the R/G/B output pins directly).

Translucent / glass materials

1. Follow the Opaque steps above, then also import T_{Name}_O
2. Change Blend Mode to Translucent (or Masked for binary cutouts)
3. Connect T_{Name}_O to the Opacity input
4. Under Material > Translucency, set Lighting Mode to Surface ForwardShading for best glass results

Emissive materials (lights, LEDs, screens)

1. Follow the Opaque steps above, then also import T_{Name}_E
2. Connect T_{Name}_E to the Emissive Color input
3. To increase glow intensity, multiply the emissive texture by a scalar parameter before connecting
4. Enable Bloom in Post Process settings to see the glow effect in-game

Which textures do I need?

UE5 Material Type	Required Textures
Opaque (default)	BC, N, ORM
Opaque + Emissive	BC, N, ORM, E
Translucent / Glass	BC, N, ORM, O
Masked (cutouts)	BC, N, ORM, O
Translucent + Emissive	BC, N, ORM, E, O

Notes

• The add-on temporarily switches to Cycles and uses GPU rendering for baking, then restores your original settings
• All materials on the object are baked onto a single UV map (same as Substance Painter export)
• Library-linked materials are temporarily made local for baking, then restored
• The ORM texture packs three grayscale maps into one RGB image, reducing texture memory by 66%
• Metallic and Opacity are baked by routing their values through the Emission channel since Blender has no native bake type for these
• Emissive is baked before Opacity and Metallic to capture the original emission data before any rewiring
• The bake resolution is determined by the image you select in the dialog — it does not modify that image

License

GPL-2.0-or-later