Material Texture Baker

Material Texture Baker

Module: Art · Category: Bake · Tool ID: UniversalBakeSuite

A three-tab material baking suite. High → Low transfers a high-poly mesh’s material onto a low-poly mesh’s UV layout. Material → Texture flattens material channels (BaseColor, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, AO, Emissive) into individual textures. Batch runs the same flattening operation across a folder of meshes.

⚠️ This is NOT projection / mesh-to-mesh / cage baking.

This tool bakes material channels by sampling a material graph onto a UV layout. It does not raycast from a low-poly through a cage to a high-poly to extract geometric Normal / AO / Curvature / Thickness / Cavity (the Substance Painter / Marmoset Toolbag / xNormal workflow).

The “Normal” output is the material graph’s normal output, not a normal map derived from high-poly surface geometry. For projection baking, use a dedicated DCC.

Also does not bake: lightmaps, distance fields, Nanite, HLOD, physics, or shader caches.

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When to use it

• Flattening a complex Material graph into individual textures (e.g., to ship a final material as a simpler PBR set)
• Cross-mesh material transfer — sampling material A onto mesh B’s UV layout
• Batch flattening every material in a folder — preparing assets for an external pipeline that expects raw textures

When not to use it

• Don’t use this for high-to-low projection baking — the “Normal” output here is the material graph’s normal, not a geometric normal from a high-poly mesh. Use Substance / Marmoset / xNormal for projection baking.
• Don’t expect lightmap / distance-field baking — those have dedicated UE workflows
• Don’t expect Nanite or HLOD baking — those have their own systems

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Opening the tool

1. Open the EQLabs Hub and search for Bake or Material Texture (or browse to Art → Bake)
2. Click the tool card
3. Use the tab bar: High → Low, Material → Texture, or Batch

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Tab 1 — High → Low

Bake one mesh’s material onto another mesh’s UV layout.

Interface

Field	What it does	Default
High Mesh picker	Source mesh whose material is sampled	(empty)
Low Mesh picker	Target mesh whose UV layout is used	(empty)
Resolution	Output texture size	2048
Bake Normal	Toggle Normal channel	true
Bake AO	Toggle AO channel	true
Bake BaseColor	Toggle BaseColor channel	false
Bake Roughness	Toggle Roughness channel	false
Bake Metallic	Toggle Metallic channel	false
Bake	Runs the cross-mesh material transfer

Workflow

1. Pick the high-poly mesh (source material)
2. Pick the low-poly mesh (target UV layout)
3. Pick channels to bake
4. Click Bake
5. New textures are saved to the configured output directory

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Tab 2 — Material → Texture

Flatten a single material’s channels to individual textures.

Interface

Field	What it does	Default
Mesh picker	The mesh whose material to flatten	(empty)
Material Slot combo	Which material slot on the mesh	0
Resolution	Output texture size	2048
Bake BaseColor	Toggle BaseColor	true
Bake Normal	Toggle Normal	true
Bake Roughness	Toggle Roughness	true
Bake Metallic	Toggle Metallic	false
Bake Emissive	Toggle Emissive	false
Bake	Flattens the chosen channels

Workflow

1. Drop a static mesh
2. Pick the material slot (most meshes have only slot 0)
3. Choose the channels you need
4. Set resolution (2048 for hero assets, 1024 for environment dressing)
5. Click Bake

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Tab 3 — Batch Mode

Folder-level batch baking — runs the Material → Texture flow on every mesh under a path.

Interface

Field	What it does	Default
Batch Folder Path	Folder of meshes to process	/Game/
Batch Bake Mode	Material to Texture (V1; more modes planned)	Material to Texture
Batch Resolution	Output resolution applied to all meshes	2048
Channel toggles	Same as Material → Texture tab
Process Folder	Walks the folder, runs the bake on each mesh
Batch Result list	Per-mesh result: name, path, status (OK / Error / Skipped), message

Workflow

1. Set the batch folder
2. Pick channels
3. Click Process Folder
4. Walk the result list to confirm everything succeeded

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Settings reference

Output Directory

Field	Default
Output Directory	/Game/EQLabs/Bake

Resolution options

512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192 (per-tab default: 2048)

Settings are persisted to [Project]/Saved/EQLabs/Settings/UniversalBakeSuite.json.

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Output

• New UTexture2D assets — one per baked channel, saved to the configured Output Directory
• Naming — <MeshName>_<Channel> (e.g., SM_Chair_BaseColor, SM_Chair_Normal)
• Compression — appropriate per channel (Normal uses TC_Normalmap, BaseColor uses TC_Default, Roughness/Metallic use TC_Masks)
• Batch result list — in-panel; cleared on each new batch

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Tips & gotchas

• The “Normal” output is from the material graph, not from geometry — read the warning at the top of this doc carefully if you’re confused about why your high-poly detail isn’t in the bake
• Resolution × channel count = memory — 4096 × 6 channels = ~400 MB during the bake. Use lower resolution if you’re hitting memory limits
• Cross-mesh transfer (Tab 1) requires both meshes to have valid UV layouts — verify with UV & Texel Suite before baking
• Compression is set per channel automatically — overrides happen via the standard Texture editor afterward if needed
• Display name is “Material Texture Baker” — but the tool ID and class name are still UniversalBakeSuite for registration history continuity

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Related tools

• Smart Mask & Texture Processor — for normal-map blending and mask generation, complementary to material flattening
• UV & Texel Suite (Modeling module) — verify UV layouts before baking
• Atlas Studio — pack multiple baked outputs into a single atlas

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