MeshBake

Skeletal & Static Mesh Baking Plugin for Unreal Engine

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Reduce Draw Calls
Each material section uses at least 2 draw calls per mesh. Baking and merging these together can give a massive performance boost.
Multi-threaded Plugin
MeshBake runs on a separate thread from the editor to minimize interruptions to your workflow.
Highly Customizable
MeshBake gives you full control over the baking process. Choose exactly which mesh sections you want to bake and merge and which you want to copy unchanged.

In-Editor Material Baking & Merging

MeshBake allows you to bake meshes in-editor and avoid the tedious importing and exporting that would otherwise be required when baking with third-party programs.


Features:

  • Bake and merge materials for both Skeletal and Static meshes
  • SkeletalMesh skinning preserved
  • SkeletalMesh bones, sockets, and skeleton preserved
  • Auto-Merge/Bake materials based on shading model type
  • Merge/Bake materials based on manually defined input/output section map
  • Bake vertex colors (optional)
  • Transfer vertex colors (optional)
  • Transfer clothing & clothing sections (optional)
  • Run on components in PIE or directly on assets in the content browser
  • In-Editor plugin, no importing/exporting of assets required
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Video 1: Demonstration Video

Video 2: Reducing drawcalls from 7700 to 1000 with MeshBake

Video 3: Merging modular Skeletal Meshes to one output Skeletal Mesh while also baking the materials

Documentation


New Features in 1.7:

  • Morph Target baking: Active Morph Targets on selected actors can be baked directly into the baked mesh geometry. A button has been added to the SkeletalMesh editor viewport that will select the preview mesh in the SkeletalMesh/Animation editor viewport when clicked. This allows for any Morph Target values set in the editor window to be quickly baked out to a new model directly from the SkeletalMesh editor window.
  • Merging of identical UV mesh sections into a single shared UV space: Identical source mesh sections will share a single unique set of UV values in the baked output mesh.
  • Low memory mode: Enabling Low memory mode greatly reduces the maximum memory usage while baking, at the expense of being slightly slower in certain cases. If your system is paging to disk while baking, enable this option to help prevent paging and greatly reduce the total baking time.


New Features in 1.3:

  • Texture Packing Toggle: Added an option to enable/disable packing of textures.
  • Bake Rotation and/or Scale: Added options to choose baking of rotation and scale.
  • Transfer Clothing Option: Added a Transfer clothing option to allow for clothing to be transferred without forcing separate mesh sections to be created for the clothing.
  • Baked UV Map Optimization: Added a new option that enables the use of mesh render data to determine source uv map usage when generating the packed uv map.
  • Merge Meshes with or without Baking: Now when no mesh merging options are selected, materials are not baked and only copied over. (Useful for merging meshes without changing the materials).


New Features in 1.2:

  • Merging of Separate Skeletal and Static Meshes: Separate Skeletal Mesh and Static Mesh assets can now be baked and merged into a single merged mesh output.
  • Merging of Modular Skeletal Meshes: Modular Skeletal Meshes can now be merged together in the editor quickly and easily due to the new merging feature listed above.
  • Bake Skeletal Mesh Bone Transforms: Skeletal Mesh bone transforms can now be "baked" into the output mesh. Useful for making minor scale adjustments.
  • Optionally Discard the Source UV Maps: Unused UV maps from the source mesh will be removed from the baked output mesh if this option is enabled.


MeshBake is a C++ plugin that allows in-editor baking and merging of materials and sections for both Skeletal and Static meshes. MeshBake allows you to bake meshes without leaving the editor, thus avoiding the cumbersome importing and exporting of assets and recreating of materials that would normally be required when baking with a third-party program.