Exporting Textures

Export writes the maps of one output node to image files in a folder you pick. Every export is per-node: you choose which output node you are exporting, and the dialog previews the exact list of files before anything is written.

Which nodes can be exported

Node	Export mode	What it writes
PBR Output	Material	The full channel set for the chosen engine preset: individual maps, the packed map, or both
Trim Sheet	Material	The seven channels the sheet composes, built from its strips (Metallic / Roughness workflow only)
Custom Output	Single texture	One file, from the single texture wired into it

How to start an export

Export button. Select a PBR Output, Custom Output, or Trim Sheet node and press Export Textures… at the top of the Properties panel. This is the only way to choose which output node you export when a project has several.
Keyboard shortcut. Ctrl/Cmd+E (“Export Textures”). This does not ask which node: it picks the first PBR Output in the graph, and if there is none, the first Trim Sheet, and if there is none, the first Custom Output. If the graph has none of the three, nothing opens and a warning appears: “Add a PBR Output, Trim Sheet, or Custom Output node to export textures”.

The dialog title is Export followed by the name of the node being exported.

Dialog controls

Shown for material exports (PBR Output / Trim Sheet):

Material type. Metallic / Roughness or Specular / Glossiness. Shown for PBR Output only; it is seeded from the workflow set on the node itself, not from the saved preset. Trim Sheet exports are always Metallic / Roughness.
Engine. The target preset. See Export Presets and Engine Targets.
Format. PNG, TGA, TIFF, BMP, or EXR. There is no JPEG: lossy compression on a texture map is a defect you only find later.
Packed map. Labeled with the layout the chosen engine uses (e.g. ORM (AO / Roughness / Metallic)). On by default. Only offered in the Metallic / Roughness workflow; Specular / Glossiness never writes a packed map.
Individual maps (one file per channel). On by default.
Maps to export. Appears only while Individual maps is on. One chip per channel the node can actually produce; tapping a chip removes that channel from the individual-map set. This does not affect the packed map. The packed map always keeps its full engine layout, because dropping a channel from it would produce a file the engine misreads.
Normal format. Engine default (showing the preset’s orientation), OpenGL (Y+), or DirectX (Y-). See Normal maps and the Y flip.
File name prefix. The leading part of every file name. Leaving it empty uses the placeholder, which is the project’s file name with the extension removed, lowercased, with runs of other characters replaced by underscores. If no project file is open (or the result is empty) the prefix is material. The field accepts only letters, digits, period, underscore, and hyphen; anything else is rejected as you type.
Planned-file preview. Under the prefix field the dialog lists the exact file names the run will write, e.g. “Will write 5 files:” followed by one name per line. When nothing can be written it reads “Nothing to write - connect maps to this node first” and the Export button is disabled.
Export / Cancel.

For a Custom Output the dialog is reduced to Format and File name prefix, plus a one-line hint: “Writes <prefix>_<node-label-slug>.<ext>”. The Export button is always enabled in this mode.

What happens after you press Export

The dialog closes and the project is marked as modified, so the settings you chose get written into the project on the next save.
A system folder picker opens, titled Export Textures To…. Canceling it aborts the export silently, with no files and no message, but your dialog choices are already stored.
Before writing, the app waits for any still-rendering maps and promotes every preview-resolution texture to full resolution, so an export never captures a stale or low-res image.
Files are written and a toast reports the result.

The run happens after the dialog is gone, in the background, so the editor stays usable while a large set encodes. The toast is how you learn it finished.

Files with the same name in the target folder are overwritten. There is no automatic numeric-suffix collision handling.

Which channels get written

A channel is exported when it is either connected, or unconnected but backed by an enabled constant on the PBR Output node (the channel’s on/off toggle plus its value). Constant channels are baked to a flat image at the export resolution; this is how you ship, say, a flat roughness map without building a graph for it.

Normal is the exception: it has no constant form, so a Normal map is exported only when something is wired into it.
Channel order for Metallic / Roughness: Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, AO, Height, Emissive, Opacity, Clearcoat, Clearcoat Roughness, Thickness.
Channel order for Specular / Glossiness: Base Color, Normal, Specular, Glossiness, AO, Height, Emissive, Opacity, Thickness. That workflow carries no clearcoat maps.
Clearcoat Roughness has no input port, so it is only ever a constant. The node’s Use Clearcoat toggle enables it and Clearcoat together.
A Trim Sheet exports seven channels - Base Color, Normal, Roughness, Metallic, AO, Height and Emissive - and only when at least one of its four slots has a source. A whole material wired into a PBR Output’s Material input supplies the same seven.
Export follows reroute chains upstream to the texture that actually feeds a channel.

Export resolution is the output node’s resolution override when it has one, otherwise the project default. There is no export-size field in the dialog. On iPad and Android the resolution ladder stops at 4096, so exports there top out at 4K; an 8K project opened on one of those devices is brought down to 4096 before it evaluates.

Messages you may see

Situation	Message	Type
Files written	“Exported N textures” (“Exported 1 texture” for a single file)	Success
Files written, some maps unavailable	“Exported N textures (M not ready)”	Success
Nothing written, some maps unavailable	“Nothing exported - connected textures are still rendering”	Warning
Nothing written, nothing wired	“Nothing exported - connect textures to this node first”	Warning
Write or encode threw	“Export failed - no files were written”	Error
`Ctrl`/`Cmd`+`E` with no output node	“Add a PBR Output, Trim Sheet, or Custom Output node to export textures”	Warning
Folder picker canceled	(no message)	(none)

The “(M not ready)” count is also where an EXR or 16-bit file that could not be encoded lands. See Bit Depth and EXR. So the “still rendering” wording can appear when the real cause is an unavailable encoder.

Saved export settings

The format, prefix, engine preset, material type, packed/individual toggles, normal override, and the list of unticked channels are all stored inside the project file as a single “last used” preset, and restored when the project is reopened. There are no named, multiple presets.

If the stored settings are missing or unreadable they fall back to: PNG, no prefix override, Generic PBR engine, Metallic / Roughness, packed map on, individual maps on, no normal override, no disabled channels. Projects saved before the preset overhaul keep their format and prefix and land on Generic PBR, with their old “Pack ORM” flag carried over as the packed-map toggle.

The same settings are what the automation surface reads and writes, so a scripted export and a dialog export produce the same files; see MCP Server and Headless CLI. Trim sheets export from there too.