Blender Addons

A small collection of Blender addons. Requires Blender 4.0+.

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Blowout Bake

blowout_bake.py

An explode-bake workflow for baking normal maps (and other passes) from a high-poly mesh onto a low-poly mesh. Instead of relying on ray-distance cages alone, you manually explode the HI/LO pair into non-overlapping positions using a shape key, bake, and the addon snaps everything back automatically.

Requirements: Cycles render engine.

Mesh naming convention: objects must end in HI or LO (e.g. PropHI, PropLO).

Workflow

1. Select your HI and LO objects.
2. Right-click in the viewport → Record Explode. This adds a Blowout shape key to both objects and makes it active.
3. Enter Edit Mode and move the mesh elements into an exploded (non-overlapping) position. Exit Edit Mode.
4. Right-click → Confirm Explode Position.
5. In the LO object's material, select the target Image Texture node in the Shader Editor.
6. Configure your bake settings in Render Properties → Cycles → Bake as normal.
7. With the pair selected, click Exploded Bake (visible in the Bake panel when a blowout pair is selected). The addon will activate the shape key, hide unrelated meshes, bake, and restore everything when done.
8. To clean up, select the pair and right-click → Delete Blowout.

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Open Folder in Filesystem

open_folder_in_filesystem.py

Adds an Open Folder in Filesystem entry to the File Browser right-click context menu. Clicking it opens the currently browsed directory in your system file manager via xdg-open.

Platform: Linux only (uses xdg-open).

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Installation

Both addons are single-file and install the same way:

1. In Blender, go to Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install.
2. Select the .py file.
3. Enable the addon with the checkbox.