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Changelog / Updates

Sanctus Bake v1.2.3 - July 29, 2026

NEW FEATURES

  • Nested Baking

    You can bake sockets inside nodegroups. This used to be a limitation, now you can go inside a nodegroup select a node, right click it and select it's sockets to bake them.

  • More Flexible

    When manually adding sockets from nodegroups or nodes (using Select Sockets for Baking), the popup menu now let's you select the target maps. Before they used to be matched by name but you had no option to change it.

  • Smarter

    Select Sockets for Baking will match sockets to target maps based on their names, but unlike previous versions you can now manually adjust them if they are not what you want.

  • Improved Performance

    Performance on large scenes was greatly improved. Using Sanctus Bake on scenes with a large amount of objects no longer causes performance issues.

Sanctus Bake v1.2.2 - June 19, 2026

Blender 5.2 Compatibility

Sanctus Bake is now compatible with Blender 5.2

Sanctus Bake v1.2.0 - June 12, 2026

This update introduces the Adaptive Color Space Resolution system, transforming Sanctus Bake into a professional-grade tool that dynamically handles any Blender OCIO working space — detecting whether the active scene_linear role resolves to Linear (standard sRGB primaries) or ACEScg.

NEW FEATURES

1. Adaptive Color Space Resolution

The engine no longer hardcodes sRGB. Instead, it queries Blender's active OCIO configuration at bake time to detect the working color space. Color maps (Base Color, Emission) are automatically tagged with the correct space — sRGB for standard pipelines, Linear Rec.709 for ACEScg environments. Data maps (Normal, Roughness, Metallic, etc.) remain Non-Color.

2. ACEScg Pipeline Support

When the engine detects an ACEScg environment via the OCIO scene_linear role, it switches to ACES-aware behavior:

  • Color maps are tagged as Linear Rec.709 instead of sRGB
  • Float buffer allocation is used for all color maps to prevent precision loss
  • The Hybrid Lighting Pass skips unnecessary sRGB↔linear conversions
  • Baked textures match the procedural setup exactly

3. Intelligent Bit Depth Allocation

The engine automatically selects the optimal bit depth per map type and export format:

  • Normal and Displacement maps are locked to 16-bit when saving as PNG or JPEG — eliminating gradient banding in smooth vector data
  • Base Color and Emission use 8-bit for PNG/JPEG, 16-bit for TIFF, and 32-bit float for OpenEXR
  • Roughness, Metallic, AO, Curvature use 8-bit for PNG/JPEG, scaling up for float formats

4. Pipeline-Aware Export

The Save All bulk export now uses resolve_pipeline_requirements() to determine the safe file format and bit depth for each map type. OpenEXR exports respect the user's configured codec and depth overrides from preferences.

5. Updated Hybrid Lighting Pass

The lighting pass now checks for ACEScg environments and skips the sRGB↔linear conversion when the data is already linear — resulting in faster processing and mathematically accurate results.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

For a complete breakdown of the color space pipeline, including tables for per-map-type color space assignment, bit depth allocation, and file format behavior, see the Color Space Pipeline documentation.