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this is my first question on stack exchange :)

If I've created and applied a material to an object using Blender's PBR shader. How do I bake out the nodes I have textures assigned to? For example I have textures assigned to the metallic, roughness Transmission and Normal nodes. I was expecting to see Bake options that correspond to my PBR nodes, which I could select, bake out and plug into Unreal's PB material shader. Assuming that I should indeed be baking out my PBR material what bake options should I be using? Is my workflow incorrect?

Thanks :)

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    $\begingroup$ By PBR, do you mean the new Principled BSDF shader? $\endgroup$ – Scott Milner Sep 22 '17 at 0:04
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    $\begingroup$ Yes the Principled BSDF shader $\endgroup$ – Bireos Sep 22 '17 at 2:11
  • $\begingroup$ I would also love to know a solution to this. From what I can tell the only thing possible is to transfer image textures using UV Wrapping/unwrapping. But that still requires extra steps using other softwares, or importing the image yet again into the engine. It really is annoying when we cant transfer the node data. It would make for a much greater workflow if we could export the material data directly to the object itself and it stays. Exporting as a FBX. And adding it to Unity Engine it transfers some of the information.. and shows the inputs with the correct names that I added in Blender, $\endgroup$ – JDM Mootzart Jul 1 '18 at 17:19
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Bit of a late answer, but I have recently released an add-on for Blender 2.8 to do exactly this simply and easily (though admittedly not quickly - baking in Blender, like rendering, takes time).

Documentation here: http://www.toohey.co.uk/SimpleBake/

Available here: https://gumroad.com/l/mzYoz

It is also possible to do this manually. In a nutshell, you need to create an image within Blender (in the UV Image Editor) and add an image node to every material you are using set to that image. That image node needs to be selected in every material, though it doesn't need to be "hooked up" to anything at all. It just floats there.

The best way is to then take each input to your Principled BSDF shader one by one, run it through an Emission shader (connected to the Material Output in place of the Principled BSDF you had before) and then bake emission.

It's a bit of a long and painful process if you have an object with lots of materials - hence why I wrote the add-on.

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