Batchtool Baker

Hi today I release first version of texture baking addon for Blender and Substance Command Line Tools (previously called Substance Batchtools).

I developed it for few reasons:

• speed - you can bake 8k textures in minutes
• reduced ram usage - I can bake highpoly meshes, without risk running out of ram
• I wanted to have quick way to bake complex objects made with GroupPro addon. But you don't have to use it. This addon works for baking normal objects too.
• Easy iteration - no need to click Import/Export multiple times in blender, and your external baking app. This is usually tedious and time consuming process. All objects are exported automatically in background.  Also addon is smart enough to know when object was changed, and export it only when needed.
• re-bake only parts of your texture, that were changed/updated.
• baking presets
• quick baked map texture preview inside blender

Supported baking passes are:

• "MAT_ID" - from material color, Vertex Color, Mesh ID, Submesh ID

• "AO"

• "NORMAL" (Tangent and World Space, OpenGL and DirectX mode)

• "UV"

• "CURVATURE"

• "POSITION" - all axis or one axis.

• "THICKNESS"

• "HEIGHT"

• "OPACITY"

More info (introduction guide) on my blog:

https://bartoszstyperek.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/batchtool-baker/

What you get:

• blender addon for baking with subtance Command Line Tools (previously known as Substance Batchtools)

Update 1.02:

• blender 2.77 compatibility fixes
• normal map 16bit output support
• dilation - changed from pixel size to percent of image size (changing output size, no longer requires dilation value change)
• material ID is now correctly saved in sRGB color space.
• some changes in UI
  
• bug fixes

Update 1.03

• added ability to bake second or next uv set (UV map)
• preview of frontal/rear ray distance
• one click cage setup

Update 1.04

• Added support for blender 2.78 (won't work with blender 2.77)

Update 1.06

• Fixed being unable to bake group (group not found bug)

Update 1.08

• baking presets
• quick texture preview (in bledner internal for now) - preview textures (ao, normal, id) in blender internal glsl mode. Button is located in Helpers box (texture icon)

Update 1.09

• Added Helper icon - 'Duplicate passes' - duplicates current bake job, with all render passes setting
• bug fix
  

Update 1.09.1

• 'texture preview' (from 'helper' toolbar) bugfix. Texture could be assigned multiple times to same material, in some cases.

Update 1.10

• added support for Substance Batchtools 6 series

Update 1.11

More features support for Substance Batchtools 6 series:

• ability to bake non square maps

• ability to bake 8k textures

Update 1.12

• Bugfixes
• Texture Preview button works in cycles now!
  
• Object with empty material won't display error message and prevent bake from now on. They will have new material assigned and bake will continue.

Update 1.13

• Bug fix : curvature map not baked even though normal map is provided

Update 1.14:

• One button click send to - Substance Painter
• correct preview of for DirectX/OpenGl normals in cycles
• Lowpoly mesh can set to group input
  
• added tga output option
• added play sound option on finished bake
• added skew map support (works only in Allegorithmic  CLT)
  
• support for Command Line Tools - Substance Automation ToolKit
• UI improvments (some buttons support Shift click now, for taking actions on multiple bake jobs, low/high poly pairs).

Update 1.15:

• bugfixes

Update 1.16:

• ability to change 'Exchange' folder path (place where temp. files, partial bakes are stored) in addon preferences.
  
• bugfixes