Bake Volume Animation (Blender Addon)

🔥 Volume to Mesh — Bake Per Frame (Mod & Progress)

A one‑click, frame‑by‑frame Volume‑to‑Mesh baker for Blender 3.6 – 4.4 with a live header progress bar and full modal responsiveness.

What it does

• Bake any simulation — Converts Volume → Mesh modifiers (smoke, fire, fluid, Mantaflow, OpenVDB…) to real geometry on every frame you choose.
• Keep or overwrite — Duplicate objects per frame or apply directly to the original.
• Apply only what you want — Default: bake just the Volume → Mesh modifiers. Toggle “Apply All Modifiers” to collapse the entire stack in top‑to‑bottom order.
• Stay in control — A slick progress slider appears right in the 3‑D View header, and the add‑on runs as a modal operator, so Blender never freezes. Hit Esc to cancel any time.
• Organised output — Baked duplicates are dropped into a collection named after the source object. Viewport & render visibility are auto‑keyed so each mesh only shows on its own frame.
• One‑file install + in‑place updater — The entire add‑on lives in a single __init__.py. Install a new ZIP right over the old one or call the built‑in update_addon(url) helper.

Perfect for

Use‑case Why this add‑on rules High‑poly caches for render farms Avoid unpredictable simulation rebuilds and get rock‑solid Alembic / FBX exports. Stylised VFX Turn smoke into voxel art, apply displacement, decimate or remesh per‑frame—then export to Eevee, Unreal or Unity. Mesh‑based physics Once baked, you can add cloth, rigid‑body or geometry‑nodes tricks that don’t work on volumes. Time‑lapse previews Duplicate‑per‑frame mode lets you scrub through real geometry without recalculating modifiers.

Quick‑start

1. Download & install the ZIP in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add‑ons ▸ Install….
2. Enable Volume to Mesh — Bake Per Frame (modal).
3. In the 3‑D View sidebar (N) open the VolumeBake tab.
4. Select any objects that have a Volume → Mesh modifier.
5. Click “Bake Volume→Mesh (All Frames)” → pick a frame range, duplication and “Apply All Modifiers” if needed → OK.
6. Watch the header slider glide from 0 → 100 %. Done!

Requirements

• Blender 3.6 LTS – 4.4+ (tested up to 4.4)
• Works on Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel) and Linux.

Files included

• volume_bake_modal.zip — the add‑on (single‑file code, ready to install)
• README.md — installation & update tips (Markdown)

License

Non‑exclusive, royalty‑free licence for commercial & personal use. You may bundle baked meshes in your own projects and sell those projects. Please don’t redistribute or resell the add‑on code itself.